2022:Submissions/LinguaLibre: pivoting to diversity

LinguaLibre: pivoting to diversity.
Tent 3 · Saturday August 13, 10:20-10:35 UTC (click for local time)

Session Notes (etherpad)

Language: English
Status: Live

Speaker(s)

Hugo Lopez

Abstract

There are 7,000 distinct languages identified among humans, half of them under thread.
LinguaLibre is a Wikimedia subproject, a web application, to rapidly mass record words of those languages.
In past years, we worked to solidly record 30 languages and initiate effort among 160 languages.
Has larger language are doing correct progresses we got to scale up much, much more.
- We developed low cost, crowd sourcing methodology to create and record vocabulary of those thousands languages.
- We want to develop more added-value services to serve, preserve, revitalize minority languages
But resources are lacking.
Here is what we do to solve it, here is how you may help.

Learning Outcomes

1) Awareness about lingualibre existence and it's usage (what tool)
2) Awareness about outcomes so far (what achievements)
3) Awareness about experiments and methodology (how)
4) Awareness about ambitions (opportunities)
5) Awareness about obstacles (risks)

Biography

Raised in a rural French village where the native language was forcibly disappeared.
Hugo lead several Wikimedia projects for two decades in parallel to Chinese language and Educational Technology and Innovation professional activity. LinguaLibre rapid recording service is a powerful tool to support lesser known and marginalized languages.
Strong supporter of diversity, co-founder and most active coordinator of LinguaLibre, his multi-sided view may bring enlightening insights on the current project's state, role, and what should come ahead.

LinguaLibre and diversity

Interactive map (quantitative)

Communities types (qualitative)

Type	Population	Status	Technological access	Conservation story
National languages	millions	State-supported	Good	—
Catalan	few million	Local institutional support	Good	—
Occitan	4M in 1950. 20,000 in 2020	Late support	Partial	From repression to "dying or death so now it's protected as a museum asset".
Taiwanese Aboriginal	100,000	Late support	Partial	From repression to folklorisation to good faith late conservation.
Surui	2000	Precarious relationship	Poor	Precarious local efforts, LinguaLibre training workshop for Surui (May 20, 2022)

Technological

Tutorial to record Wayuunaiki voices on Lingua Libre (3mins)

Presentation

Authors: Yug

1) Why ? Who are we ?

Defending our heritage
Fighting back monolinguism

2) How ?

Mission: document language and voice diversity
- by accent (areas), gender, age, languages
- into audio dictionaries
- from larger language to lesser documented

3) LinguaLibre rapid recording tool (what)

Lingua libre Record Studio
Rapid !
Solid beginner dictionary : 3 days + 3 hours

4) Résults so far

160 languages / 25+ correctly
800+ contributors

5) Current state: intermediary crisis

Observable biase to larger language (map) -> new strategies
Diverses usages -> new bugs
Diverse community typologies -> new methodologies

6) The plan 2018-2022

Larger, richer languages as demonstrators
Expansion exploratoire
Expansion

7) New plan

Larger, richer languages as demonstrators
Expansion exploratoire -> unblanced
Bugs/different needs: Technological fixes, New methodologies
Connect to marginalized languages