@inproceedings{ishita-mamidi-2025-evolution,
    title = "The Evolution of Gen Alpha Slang: Linguistic Patterns and {AI} Translation Challenges",
    author = "Ishita, Ishita  and
      Mamidi, Radhika",
    editor = "Zhao, Jin  and
      Wang, Mingyang  and
      Liu, Zhu",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop)",
    month = jul,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Vienna, Austria",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2025.acl-srw.43/",
    pages = "678--686",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-254-1",
    abstract = "Generation Alpha (born 2010-2024) is the first generation fully raised within the digital ecosystem. They exhibit unique linguistic behaviours influenced by rampant online communication and platform-specific cultures. This study examines the rapid evolution of Gen Alpha slang through a comparative analysis of Millennial and Gen Z vernacular. We identify three core linguistic patterns: extreme lexical compression, digital culture-driven semantic shifts and part-of-speech conversion. We construct a comprehensive slang corpus sourced from online platforms and evaluate the performance of four AI translation systems (viz. Google Translate, ChatGPT 4, Gemini 1.0, DeepSeek v3) on over 100 slang terms. Our results reveal significant translation challenges rooted in culturally-bound terms from gaming, meme culture, and mental health discourse. Most errors are the result of inadequate cultural contextualization, with literal translations dominating the error patterns. Our findings highlight the critical limitations in current language models and emphasize the need for adaptive, culturally sensitive and context-aware frameworks that can handle the dynamic lexicon of evolving youth vernacular."
}