LinguaLink AI: Connecting Cultures in Social Care

As our society becomes more and more diverse, the complexity of social work also increases. This is particularly the fact for communication in social care, that is increasingly taking place in multilingual contexts. It is therefore essential that all students—regardless of their language background—are able to operate with confidence and cultural sensitivity in diverse professional situations.

Although the social sector already uses these tools, this often happens without clear, evidence-based guidelines. Many applications insufficiently take into account empathy, cultural nuances, and confidentiality—factors that are essential for high-quality care and support.

This Erasmus+ project responds to the urgent need to modernize social work programmes in this area. We will choose for an innovative approach: the integration of AI-driven real-time translation tools into the curriculum.

To come to a suitable range, we investigate the effectiveness of these AI tools in practice and develop guidelines for their ethical and thoughtful use. In this way, we ensure that technology is not only accurate, but also contributes to human-centered, culturally aware communication.

Concrete plans

• We will select AI translation tools for use in the social sector;
• We will test AI translation tools for social work, assessing their accuracy, cultural sensitivity, ethics, and sustainability;
• We will develop guidelines and training for students and lecturers;
• We will continuously evaluate the tools based on feedback of the users and new technological developments.