Intern - Language Research & AI Training

X STAR TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 17,000 - 28,000; Full time

Job summary

X STAR TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD. in Singapore seeks a motivated language research and annotation intern to explore linguistic characteristics, regional variations, and pronunciation patterns for model adaptation.

You will also annotate text, audio, images, and video, while ensuring quality and guideline conformance. The role offers exposure to NLP, computer vision, and cross-modal evaluation with potential long-term involvement in localization projects and dataset quality assurance.

Qualifications

• Pursuing or recently completed a degree in Linguistics or related field with strong academics.
• Native or near-native proficiency in Malay, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, or English.
• Solid grounding in core linguistic concepts such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics or pragmatics.
• Strong analytical reading and writing skills; able to produce clear, structured assessments.
• Attention to nuance and ability to follow annotation guidelines.
• Exposure to NLP, computational linguistics or computer vision is a plus.
• Experience with transcription, translation, subtitling, localization or language teaching is valued.
• Familiarity with image or video annotation tasks and tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Language research: investigate linguistic characteristics and regional variation for model adaptation.
• Localization analysis: document findings to guide system localization and guidelines.
• Pronunciation & phonetic work: annotate pronunciation patterns for speech tasks.
• Text & audio annotation: label data for semantic classification, sentiment, and discourse.
• Language model evaluation: assess outputs for fluency, accuracy, and cultural relevance; provide feedback.
• Image annotation: label objects, scenes, and spatial relationships in images.
• Video annotation: track objects and actions across frames and label sequences per guidelines.
• Quality & consistency: review annotated data for accuracy and resolve ambiguities.

Skills

Phonology

Morphology

Syntax

Semantics

Pragmatics

Analytical writing

Nuance sensitivity

Annotation guidelines

NLP exposure

Computer vision exposure

Transcription

Translation

Subtitling

Localization

Dialects

Education

Linguistics degree

Tools

Label Studio

Labelbox

Prodigy

SuperAnnotate

Job description

What You Will Do

Language Research & Evaluation:

• Language research: Investigate linguistic characteristics of target languages — phonological patterns, morphology, pragmatics, regional variation, and code-switching behaviors.
• Localization analysis: Identify how language use differs across regions, registers, and cultural contexts; document findings to guide model adaptation.
• Pronunciation & phonetic work: Analyse and annotate pronunciation characteristics, prosodic patterns, and phonetic variation for speech-related tasks.
• Text & audio annotation: Label data for tasks such as semantic classification, grammaticality judgements, sentiment, discourse structure, and speaker intent.
• Language model evaluation: Assess AI-generated language outputs for fluency, accuracy, cultural appropriateness, and task fit; write detailed feedback to drive model improvement.

Vision Annotation & Labelling:

• Image annotation: Label objects, scenes, attributes, and spatial relationships in images.
• Video annotation: Track objects across frames, annotate actions and events, and label temporal sequences according to project-specific guidelines.
• Visual quality assurance: Review annotated image and video data for consistency and accuracy; resolve ambiguities against labelling guidelines.
• Cross-modal work: Annotate data where language and vision intersect — such as image captioning evaluation, visual question answering, or OCR output review in target languages.

Across Both Streams:

• Guideline development: Collaborate with the team to refine annotation SOPs and evaluation metrics; use your linguistic and domain knowledge to resolve edge cases.
• Quality & consistency: Cross-check annotated data before submission; flag systematic errors and propose corrections.

Who we're looking for

Required:

• Pursuing or recently completed a degree in Linguistics, Language Studies, Translation, Communication, or a related field — with strong academic results.
• Native or near-native proficiency in one or more of our target languages: Malay, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, or English.
• Solid grounding in core linguistic concepts — phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, or pragmatics.
• Strong analytical reading and writing skills; ability to produce clear, structured written assessments.
• High attention to nuance — comfortable making fine-grained distinctions in language use and visual content.
• Able to follow detailed annotation guidelines and flag ambiguities systematically.

Preferred:

• Exposure to computational linguistics, NLP, or computer vision — coursework, projects, or self-study counts.
• Experience with transcription, translation, subtitling, localization, or language teaching.
• Prior experience with image or video annotation tasks (object detection, segmentation, action labelling).
• Familiarity with annotation tools such as Label Studio, Labelbox, Prodigy, SuperAnnotate, or similar platforms.
• Interest in phonetics, sociolinguistics, or cross-cultural communication.
• Multilingual ability — particularly in dialects or regional varieties of target languages.
• Available for a long-term, full-time, on-site internship.