Nationella språkbanken and Swe-CLARIN

Our language permeates all aspects of human existence, and has a dual role when it comes to research, as it is both an indispensable research tool and simultaneously a study object in itself. Nationella språkbanken reflects this dual role.

On the one hand, is is based on a foundation of language resources and technology, to support language technology, Swedish and general linguistics, phonetics, speech technology and other related disciplines that focus on the language in itself. On the other hand, the infrastructure supports all areas where language constitutes primary data, such as humanities and social sciences, cognitive science, psychology, interaction and communication, artificial intelligence, teaching and learning, and also medicine.

Nationella språkbanken has three departments: Språkbanken Text, which corresponds to the old Språkbanken in Gothenburgh, focusing on text-based language technology; Språkbanken Speech at the Royal Institute of Technology KTH in Stockholm, focusing on speech technology and speech research; and Språkbanken Sam at the Institute of Language and Folklore, focusing on supporting research into societal language issues.

Nationella språkbanken also administers Swe-Clarin, the Swedish membership of the European infrastructure CLARIN-ERIC, which is a distributed infrastructure with e-science for humanities, social sciences and educational sciences, based on a network of national nodes that offer language data, processing services and expertise to the research community. The nodes are normally located at universities, research institutions, libraries and public archives. Sweden has been part of CLARIN-ERIC since 2014.