Geneva, 10 November. Kazakh has for the first time joined the 20 languages of the experimental automatic subtitling system WIPO Speech-to-Text of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said.
The system was presented at the first Global Forum on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence at WIPO headquarters in Geneva. The forum was held on 9–10 November under the chairmanship of Kairat Torebayev, Kazakhstan's Permanent Representative to the WTO and other international economic organisations, and was opened by WIPO Director General Daren Tang, the ministry's statement says. The matter was settled on the initiative of Kazakhstan's Permanent Mission in Geneva and by agreement with the WIPO Secretariat, the mission clarified.
Kazakh subtitles were switched on in the "Live Transcript" section of the forum's broadcast, Kazpatent explained: the broadcast ran on 9–10 November from 14:00 to 22:00 Astana time. According to the ministry, the system will let Kazakh scientists, inventors, specialists and government representatives follow international discussions in Kazakh in real time. The ministry sees the inclusion of the state language in WIPO's digital service as the result of promoting it internationally.
The reports do not name the other 19 languages of the system, the accuracy of the subtitles or how long it will stay experimental.
What it means: Speeches at WIPO events can be read in automatic subtitles in Kazakh; for now the system works in experimental mode.
Who benefits: According to the ministry's description, Kazakh scientists, inventors, specialists and government representatives, who will be able to follow international discussions in Kazakh; the ministry sees this as a result of promoting the state language.
Background: WIPO is the UN specialised agency for intellectual property. The Global Forum on IP and AI is being held for the first time, but it has no norm-setting function: decisions, as the forum page says, remain with WIPO's standing committees. The state programme for implementing language policy for 2020–2025 noted that Kazakh was not included in text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology. President Tokayev, speaking at the 10th Kurultai of the international society "Qazaq tili", cited an OpenAI study: Kazakh is among the languages whose use in AI systems has been growing rapidly over the past three years. According to Yandex data he cited, the number of Kazakh-language users of one of the company's apps grew by 30% compared with 2025, Azertag reported.
