2025:Program/Preserving Linguistic Diversity through the Wiki Audio Walk Campaign
Session title: Preserving Linguistic Diversity through the Wiki Audio Walk Campaign
- Session type: Lecture
- Track: Diversity & Inclusion
- Language: en
🎥 Session recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WIKIMANIA_Day_3_Nyeri_-_Preserving_linguistics_diversity_through_the_Wiki_audio_walk_campaign.webm 🎥
This session shows a possible way for endangered languages and variants with limited literacy resources to be documented using the "Wiki Audio Walk" campaign model, highlights the key points of the program (conception, planning, execution, and results), emphasizes the need to invest more in this project across various languages, and highlights the Tyap Wikimedians experience.
Description
Overview: The Wiki Audio Walk (WAW) campaign involves documenting and preserving languages and language varieties, with a special focus on endangered varieties that have limited literacy resources. This initiative ensures that these voices are recorded, celebrated, and made accessible for future generations.
Aim: To bring to public awareness what the "Wiki Audio Walk" campaign is and what it aims to achieve.
Objectives: 1. Community engagement: Involve local speakers in gathering the audio data, and encourage their participation in keeping their language alive. 2. Awareness creation: Make the public aware of the importance of preserving minoritized languages, use social media campaigns, blog posts, and community events, and advocate for linguistic diversity and the protection of endangered languages at local and international forums. 3. Collaboration: Work with linguists and language experts to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the recordings and related materials, and seek partnerships with academic institutions and organizations focused on language preservation and revitalization (including Wikimedia language and tech experts, Language Diversity Hub, etc.). 4. Feedback and improvement: Create a feedback mechanism to gather input from community members and users of the audio repository to improve the project continuously, and you may have a common platform (e.g., Telegram or WhatsApp group) to implement the above. 5. Sustainability: Create a plan for the ongoing maintenance and expansion of the audio repository, ensure that the project remains a living resource, and explore funding opportunities and partnerships to support future initiatives related to language documentation and preservation (e.g., from Wikimedia grants, fellowships from Wikitongues, and others).
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
Languages with fewer materials are usually excluded from development in the Wikimedia space. We often find only a few lines written about them on Wikipedia. However, this project shows that Wikimedia Commons can be a resource center for such languages through audio preservation. Making these records available in the open creates an avenue for linguists and researchers, as well as Wikimedians. This has an impact on their productivity. About sustainability, having continuous funding to bring in more language data into the Wiki space as well as continuous collaboration with linguists and relevant experts who will use the work and create more works with them, keeps the work going and creates the need to sustain the work.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
- Etherpad link
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wiki_Audio_Walk_Wikimania_presentation
Resources
Speakers
- Kambai Akau
- Kambai hails from Middle Belt (central) Nigeria. He is a minoritized language advocate and is a speaker of the Tyap language. He began editing Wikipedia in 2016, but had his user account registered on 16 May 2018. He edits across different Wikimedia sister projects like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Incubator, MetaWiki, Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, alongside Wikimania, Outreach Dashboard, as well as Translatewiki. His contributions are mostly in English and Tyap. Other languages he contributes to include Jju and Nigerian Pidgin (Naija).
- fridaymusak
- Friday Kuyet Musa is a young and passionate advocate of minoritised and endangered languages who hails from southern Kaduna, Middle Belt of Nigeria. He is a Board of Trustees member of the Tyap Wikimedians User Group.
- He is an active Wikimedian with major contributions in the kcg (code for Tyap), the incubator and other sister projects like Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, etc
- He has organised and facilitated many Wiki Outreach Campaigns across the region.