University of Alicante (UA) reserach group Transducens and MasterWord (specifically its Mayan Languages Preservation Project) have partnered to bridge the digital divide for the Mayan language Q’anjob’al. Despite having a negligible online presence, the language is spoken by more than 170,000 people in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango, and several thousand more in Chiapas.
The UA Transducens group recently coordinated an in-person technical workshop in Antigua, Guatemala, supervised by UA researcher Andrés Lou. The workshop focused on translating the well-known FLORES+ evaluation dataset into four Mayan languages: K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Q’eqchi’, and Mam. The team has now announced that a fifth language, Q’anjob’al, will be added thanks to the alliance with MasterWord.
Under this collaborative partnership, the MasterWord Foundation is ‘directly funding and remunerating native Q’anjob’al translators and reviewers under fair working conditions, whilst the UA provides its technical and methodological infrastructure, as well as its expertise in artificial intelligence technologies for low-resource languages.’
Complementing this alliance is Guatemala’s Fundación Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (Francisco Marroquín language project foundation), acting as a third pillar collaborating with both entities to recruit and supervise the native Q’anjob’al linguists who will carry out the translation work.
FLORES+ currently covers more than 200 languages worldwide. The four translated Mayan languages will soon be integrated into this multilingual dataset, with Q’anjob’al following shortly after. By integrating Q’anjob’al into FLORES+, the project ensures that developers and researchers worldwide can incorporate this Mayan language into future artificial intelligence models.
The translation work is scheduled to begin in July 2026 and will last for four months. To comply with the open-source spirit of the FLORES+ dataset and UNESCO recommendations, all resulting Q’anjob’al translations will be published under an open licence (Creative Commons) and hosted in public, open repositories.
According to MasterWord’s CEO Ludmila Golovine, linguistic rights are human rights, and technology must be a bridge, not a barrier, to preserving indigenous heritage. She added that by aligning their active on-the-ground network and funding with the machine translation expertise of the University of Alicante, they are ensuring that the benefits of digital innovation flow directly back to the communities keeping these languages alive.
Reflecting on the social impact of the project, Juan Antonio Pérez Ortiz, one of the two principal investigators from the University of Alicante, added: “Working alongside MasterWord, the Mayan Languages Preservation Project, and the Fundación Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín allows our research to achieve its true social purpose. This is not just about training algorithms; we are building an open digital foundation validated by the communities themselves.”
“These efforts will pave the way for machine translation systems that make access to essential health, education, and justice services easier for thousands of Q’anjob’al speakers,” explained Víctor Sánchez Cartagena, co-principal investigator for the project at the UA. The University of Alicante research team involved in this project also includes Felipe Sánchez-Martínez, director of the Transducens research group, and researchers Andrés Lou Ríos and Miquel Esplà Gomis.
About UA’s Transducens
Transducens is a research group at the University of Alicante in Spain focused on machine translation, digital libraries, and computer‑assisted education. With over 25 years of academic expertise, the team develops technologies for low‑resource languages, leads major EU‑funded MT projects, and contributes open‑source tools such as Apertium while advancing multilingual AI research and cultural preservation.
About MasterWord
MasterWord is a global language‑access company providing interpreting, translation, multimedia, training, staffing, and AI‑driven solutions. Based in Houston, it supports organizations across healthcare, government, energy, and enterprise sectors, helping clients connect across languages and cultures through comprehensive services, supported languages, and professional development resources. Operating under the mandate of the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032), it actively leads the Mayan Languages Preservation Project through its MasterWord Foundation.
