The case for standardization is convincing. Not only do standards facilitate regulation, but they also facilitate the integration of systems in a globalized economy. Languages are susceptible to codes or standardization, as are hundreds of other functions.
Internationally recognized codes for each language, language family, and dialect assist national systems and organizations in appropriately identifying and managing data.
They are utilized for bibliographic purposes in libraries, information management systems, databases, and websites, as well as for ensuring that machine learning training data serves its intended purpose. In addition to being efficient, precisely aligning language variants is also handy and protects your brand. So, what code should you seek to identify a language precisely? Together with ISO 3166 country codes, ISO 639-3 defines practically all known languages in the world without ambiguity.
Pre ISO 639-3
Prior to ISO 639-3, there was ISO 639-1, a two-letter identification; but, as the digital world has expanded, so has the need for more exact language support. For example, “zh” for Chinese in ISO 639-1 is “zho” in ISO 639-3, with around 16 additional language codes for various dialects, such as “cdo” for Min Dong Chinese, “cmn” for Mandarin Chinese, “hak” for Hakka Chinese, etc.
In the spirit of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup, we may use the English word “football” to illustrate the significance of distinguishing language varieties. US English speakers understand football to be an entirely different sport than, for example, British English speakers, who call it soccer. However, the distinction between American and British English is not addressed by ISO 639, although it is distinguished by nation codes.
ISO-639 does not consider English to be a macro language, despite the numerous dialects of English around the world. The majority of the other English codes are Creole or Pidgin versions, such as Jamaican Creole English, which may accentuate how unsuitable it is to collect Arabic variants under one code, such as Egyptian Arabic (arz), as distinguished from standard Arabic (ara). When it comes to lexicons, training data, and data management solutions, it is essential to differentiate languages to avoid chaotic results. The ideal approach for the majority of applications is to combine ISO 639-3 and ISO 3166 to specify the intended language and area.
ISO languages standards
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has issued five sections for the standardization of language identification: ISO 639 specifies internationally recognized codes (two-, three-, or four-letter codes) for designating languages or language families.
Part 1 (ISO 639-1) is the oldest standard representing the majority of two-letter-coded languages. It covers the most widely spoken languages but does not account for linguistic diversity. Parts 2 through 5 use three-letter codes and provide additional local combinations to account for all known natural languages, whether extinct or still spoken.
ISO 639-3 covers 7,000 more languages than ISO 639-2 and is intended for usage as a metadata code. It is frequently used in computer and information systems, such as web and SaaS applications, to support several languages.
Delivering increasingly customized solutions to end users necessitates accurate language identification so that applications may correspond with end user expectations in each location and language. The 3-letter ISO 639-3 and ISO 3166 codes allow for the differentiation of these distinct languages. The 3-letter ISO system is utilized by Ethnologue, one of the largest and most extensive language databases accessible today.
Nonetheless, there are a surprising number of requests for training data for undifferentiated languages that are either undefined by ISO 639 or anticipate results that comprise two or more varieties that share the same ISO 639-1 code. The longer migration to ISO 639-3 is delayed, the more system ambiguity will develop in language classification-required systems. There will be a greater possibility of cross-variant contamination at a greater expense.
Once you begin working with languages that have multiple variants, you must switch to the 3-letter coding scheme. However, while a one-to-one mapping exists between all 2-letter codes and 3-letter codes, the reverse is not the case. Nonetheless, updating procedures to the ISO-639-3 standard is a future-proof action that should be anticipated.
The advantages of ISO standards
For natural language processing (NLP) models to be effective for spoken languages, they must be trained with precision and precision. The optimal pairing consists of ISO-639-3 language codes and 3166 country codes. Examples include American English (eng-USA), British English (eng-GBR), Canadian English (eng-CAN), Australian English (eng-AUS), South African English (eng-ZAF), etc. A speech-recognition-capable voice assistant must be able to identify the English dialect in order to correctly interpret the request and produce the desired result.
The capacity to reliably identify people with the appropriate language abilities for each activity and the ability to consistently refer to the same language across organizations and applications are the two primary advantages of regularly implementing these ISO standards throughout a system.