Metaglossia: The Translation World

A recent front page article in this newspaper suggested that Maltese, together with a number of other “small” European languages, risks being left out in the cold in the digital age (Maltese At Risk Of Digital Extinction, October 1). The immediate motivation for the article was a report published under the auspices of Metanet, a Europe-wide network of research centres involved in the development of language technology and re­sources, of which the University of Malta’s Department of Intelligent Computer Systems and Institute of Linguistics form part.
The digital extinction of Maltese is being addressed by ongoing developments both within academia and industry
- Albert Gatt
The report adopted the term digital extinction to describe the risk faced by languages which do not have adequate support in various areas of language technology.
The term has a satisfyingly ominous ring to it, one that was no doubt designed for the pages of the popular press.
Nevertheless, the point made by the report is well-taken. Broadly speaking, it is this: while some languages – notably English – appear to have a comfortable existence in the digital/computational world, as indicated both by their frequency of use in the electronic media and by the development of intelligent, language-sensitive technology for these languages, others like Maltese are far less well represented and are therefore a cause for concern.
There are two important prin­ciples that implicitly underlie this report.
The first is that multilinguality should be safeguarded as an outward manifestation of cultural and social diversity, with technology functioning as a bridge to effective communication.
The second is that all languages should be equal, that is, all speakers should be able to avail themselves of technology to facilitate communication, no matter how small the linguistic community they hail from.

London is about to experience Olympic fever again with the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games taking place tonight. Already disabled athletes have started appearing in the city and interacting with locals and other visitors.

The Paralympics provide a great occasion to focus attention on the issues and difficulties faced by disabled people across the world. The BBC reported earlier today that:

“if Chinese athletes perform as well in the Paralympic Games [a China did in the Olympic Games] it could help change attitudes towards disabled people in China. The Beijing Paralympic Games in 2008 played a huge part in changing attitudes, but campaigners say China still has a lot to do”.

Locally, the Head of Scope Cymru has made a similar point in the context of a survey showing attitudes to disabled people are worsening in Wales.

Those of us interested in endangered languages might think of sign languages and the Deaf community (since all sign languages are endangered and subject to pressure from speakers of majority spoken languages), however, as UK Deaf Sport reminds us: “many Deaf people do not consider themselves disabled, particularly in physical or intellectual ability. Rather, we consider ourselves to be part of a cultural and linguistic minority”. There is in fact a separate Deaflympics, “the second oldest multi-sport and cultural festival in the world, with a proud history stretching back to the first Games in Paris, in 1924″ and sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee. It was recently announced by Craig Crowley, President of the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf, that the next Summer Deaflympics will be held in Sophia, Bulgaria in 2013 (following the cancellation of plans for Athens).

The visibility (no pun intended) of sign languages among linguists, and the wider community, has been slowly increasing in recent years, however, like other minorities and the disabled there is still some way to go. For example, the list of DoBeS projects of the Volkswagen Foundation does not include any sign languages at all, despite the information for applicants [.pdf] stating that “documentation projects may focus on endangered dialects, moribund languages as well as sign languages”. The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at SOAS has so far funded eight projects on sign languages, namely:

Australian sign language by Trevor Johnson, Macquarie University
Côte d’Ivoire sign language by Tano Angoua Jean-Jacques, University of Cocody at Abidjan
a village sign language of India by Sibaji Panda, University of Central Lancashire
Malian sign language by Victoria Nyst, Leiden University
a village sign language in Bali by Connie de Vos, International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies
Mardin sign language of Turkey by Ulrike Zeshan, University of Central Lancashire
Mexican sign language by Claire Ramsey, University of California San Diego
Inuit sign language by Joke Schuit, University of Amsterdam
Corpora for several of these are available in the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, namely Auslan, Malian sign, Indian village sign, and Inuit sign.

Le projet RefLex a pour but de tester un ensemble d’hypothèses fondamentales sur la structure et l’évolution des langues d’Afrique qui sont souvent répétées dans la littérature, mais dont la validité n’a jamais pu être démontrée de façon concrète. Ces hypothèses ont en commun qu’elles ne peuvent être testées que par une approche quantitative, qui quant à elle suppose l’existence d’une documentation assez complète. Les quelque 2200 langues africaines offrent une grande diversité typologique, avec cependant quelques caractères particuliers qui transcendent les familles linguistiques comme les zones géographiques, et ceci pour chaque niveau d'analyse. Ces caractères – on peut citer comme exemples les pronoms logophoriques où l'articulation labiovélaire – n'ont jamais pu faire l'objet d'études systématiques en raison principalement du manque de données accessibles pour la majorité des langues africaines. RefLex résout ce problème grâce à l’exploitation systématique de la documentation lexicale existante qui est en fait beaucoup plus importante que la documentation grammaticale et malgré cela souvent ignorée dans les études typologiques. L’un des buts de RefLex est de rendre accessible aux chercheurs intéressés la documentation dispersée et difficile d'accès. En effet, le corpus lexical des langues africaines qui sera accessible en ligne à l’ensemble de la communauté scientifique au terme du projet fournira un accès immédiat à un volume de données considérable (au moins 2 millions d'entrées lexicales à l'issue du projet, pour plus de 1000 langues). Cette documentation permettra des avancées spectaculaires dans divers domaines : typologie, phylogénie, sémantique lexicale, diffusion lexicale, linguistique aréale. Il s'agira de la plus grosse base de données comparative en ligne au monde.

The Conference on Endangered Languages and Cultures of Native America (CELCNA)
March 23-24, 2012

Officer's Club, University of Utah

Salt Lake City, Utah

Deadline for Abstracts: Jan 13, 2012

Deadline for Workshop Proposals: Dec 16, 2011

We invite proposals for individual papers and posters on any aspect of American Indian languages, including:

• Language documentation & description

• Computations approaches to documentation and language revitalization

• Community outcomes of language documentation

• Lessons learned from language documentation

• Anthropological linguistics

• Historical linguistics

• Sociolinguistics

• Text collection and analysis

• Phonetics and phonology

• Morphology

• Syntax

• Semantics