I Know How to Spell My Name

On how technology excludes "other" cultures

“I am not a typo” campaign poster

About a week ago I was working on a presentation, and as usual put a subtitle with my name on the first slide: “Daria Markava”.

As soon as I finished typing out my last name, it got underlined in red. The same thing happened while I was writing this post:

I right-click and get suggested to change the spelling to “Markova”. Just like that, my cultural identity is labeled “incorrect” by an algorithm that was developed by someone who has probably never heard about my country.

I am Belarusian. In the Belarusian language, my last name is spelled with all a’s. “Markova”, which Google suggests changing it to, is a transliteration from Russian - which is not my native language. The spelling of my last name is one of the very few things that let me protect, however subtly, my cultural identity when no one really bothers to make a distinction between Belarus and Russia.

Getting your name flagged as if some John Smith from Google knows how to spell it better than you do is one of the many ways in which less-spoken, endangered and underrepresented languages are overlooked by Western-centric technologies (and the fact that I’m saying this as a white Eastern-European shows just how narrow the circle of “acceptable” cultures is). Last year, a whole “I am not a typo” campaign was launched, calling for Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. to make the autocorrect systems more inclusive of people’s names.

As one user pointed out, it shouldn’t be hard for tech companies to update their dictionaries, because they update them with slang all the time. I found this comment to be particularly interesting, as it highlights one of the key issues with the big tech industry: a small and predominantly white, male, western group of people gets to decide what matters, and everyone else just has to adapt. Apparently slang takes priority over names, because it facilitates communication within mainstream cultures. And if your name isn’t “mainstream” enough? It’s not important. Deal with it.

This goes beyond names. Type “colour” and watch it get underlined as if it’s incorrect. Look up anything length/height-related and the top answer will most likely be in miles, feet or inches.

Of course, you can always click “add to dictionary” and move on - but the problem of Western centrism won’t disappear as easily as the red zigzag line. It won’t change the fact that “the West” can enjoy technology to the fullest, while “the Rest” are consistently told that their identities aren’t important enough to acknowledge.

Technology is everywhere, but it’s not designed to be for everyone. If it is used everywhere, but only represents a small number of the world’s cultures, it’s not progress - it’s colonization.

Thanks for reading :)