Description
“Lost in Transliteration” is a multi-part project that explores how Chinese names are transformed and often misread by Western-centric systems of transliteration—processes that often flatten cultural nuance and lead to misclassification or erasure.
The project includes two interactive tools: Not My Name, which reveals transliteration ambiguities, and the upcoming Not My Gender, which critiques gender inference systems and their binary assumptions. Complementing these is Names in Shadow, an art installation with both physical and web-based components that tell Misreading Name Stories, drawn from a dataset of 81,177 Chinese scholar names. This dataset also supports a scientific research study on disambiguation and gender inference algorithms.
This talk examines how data science, visualization, and artistic practice can work together to critique algorithmic bias and challenge assumptions of neutrality in data. By revealing, reframing, and resisting these biases, we aim to protect the cultural integrity of names—and the people they represent.
