The Scottish Government has put the future of the Gaelic language in the technology spotlight by launching a challenge under its latest CivTech innovation round, aiming to address barriers facing Scotland’s native tongue and harness new digital opportunities for its speakers and learners.
This initiative, publicised as Challenge 11.2 in the newly announced CivTech 11 accelerator, directly targets the long-standing challenge of “data sparsity” in Gaelic—meaning the scarcity of high-quality data required to build advanced language technologies such as speech recognition, translation, and text-to-speech tools.
The challenge, developed by the Scottish Government’s Gaelic and Scots Division with input from University of Edinburgh language technologist Professor Will Lamb, seeks technological solutions to bring Gaelic on par with other minority languages like Basque, Irish, and Welsh.
“Gaelic is a living language in Scotland. It is the main language of many families and communities, especially in the Outer Hebrides, despite predictions of its ‘imminent demise’ going back generations,” states the official challenge document from the Scottish Government’s Directorate for Education Reform.
Professor Lamb, acting as lead advisor to the challenge, explains the wider impact:
“Success in this area could elevate Gaelic’s status and help secure its future in the digital age,” he comments. “A stubborn barrier…is data sparsity – a problem that’s common to most minority languages. The limited availability of Gaelic text and speech data constrains the accuracy of speech and language models, which results in unreliable machine translation and speech recognition, and flawed outputs from tools such as ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs)”.
A spokesperson for the CivTech programme emphasized the broader vision:
“This Challenge aims to overcome this barrier, ensuring Gaelic language and culture thrive in the 21st century and beyond. Successfully addressing data sparsity will enrich communities, safeguard cultural heritage and unlock economic opportunities, providing lasting benefits for speakers and learners globally,” the challenge summary outlines.
While Gaelic continues to enjoy a “vibrant presence” in education, media, tourism, and cultural heritage, the growth of online learning platforms and recent uptick in speaker numbers—recorded for the first time in 50 years by the 2022 census—showcase significant potential if the right digital resources are made available.
Professor Lamb highlights the broader commercial and societal value:
“Gaelic has an unusually high learner-to-speaker ratio compared to most languages. Some estimate there are around 7 learners for every fluent speaker…Crucially, however, Gaelic is just one of thousands of languages facing data sparsity challenges. A successful solution for Gaelic will deliver a model suitable for other low-resource languages too,” says the official challenge brief.
Benefits expected from the challenge’s solutions include new digital tools for education, media, business branding, creative industries, and accessible customer services for both Scotland and the international Gaelic community. There is optimism that resulting technologies could even be commercialized for use in other minority language contexts worldwide.
The challenge opened for applications on July 22, 2025, and invites innovators – ranging from single founders to larger tech firms – to submit their proposals by September 2, 2025.
Shortlisted teams will develop prototypes during the Accelerator phase starting in January 2026, with the winning solution set to help propel Gaelic’s digital journey into the next century.
More than 100 companies have passed through the Accelerator phase of CivTech since it launched in 2016.
