Talks

A Shiny for Python Cultural Survival Tool: Training Your Slang Translator

Sunday, May 17th, 2026 2:30 p.m.–3 p.m. in Grand Ballroom A

Presented by

Elizabeth Black

Description

Bà ngoại(grandmother) is a slang translation App that I have built in Shiny for Python and have trained it in Vietnamese. It has a reactive UI that quickly delivers the Vietnamese slang equivalent. Instead of a literal translation, it identifies meaning, tone, and even risk level using TF-IDF and cosine similarity all while blending humor and machine learning to help users understand slang in context. Users who need a quick slang phrase, will type a phrase in the reactive UI and Bà ngoại returns the closest slang match with explanations all through a friendly and reactive Shiny for Python interface. It's fun, educational look at the generational slang language, culture, and computational linguistics, but you can train it to be your abuela, your grand-mère or even your grandma. Your grandma of choice wants you to survive the cultural and generational slang gap unscathed.

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