Less-Networked Speaker Communities and Digital Language Archives

FAIN: HD-51455-11

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Lise Dobrin (Project Director: March 2011 to August 2013)

A conference of linguistics scholars, technology specialists, and cultural community representatives to explore ways of enabling speakers of endangered languages to participate in the ongoing development and stewardship of digital language archives.

Fieldwork, description, and preservation of research results are often seen as endpoints of language documentation projects. Although archives are doing their best to ensure that source communities can ultimately gain access to the language materials they produce, little is being done to facilitate their involvement in the ongoing curation of those materials. Enhancing and extending such involvement will significantly increase both the scholarly value of documented materials and its impact in source communities. Using the situations of rural Papua New Guinea and Cameroon as model cases, this project will bring together an international group of scholars, technical experts, and community members for a two day conference to intensively explore appropriate “bridging” technologies and make recommendations to help digital language archives overcome fundamental obstacles to maintaining direct, ongoing relationships with archive stakeholders who reside in less-networked communities.

Associated Products

The IATH ELAN Text-Sync Tool: A Simply System for Mobilizing ELAN Transcripts On- or Off-Line (Article)
Title: The IATH ELAN Text-Sync Tool: A Simply System for Mobilizing ELAN Transcripts On- or Off-Line
Author: Douglas Ross
Author: Lise M. Dobrin
Abstract: In this article we present the IATH ELAN Text-Sync Tool (ETST; see http://community.village.virginia.edu/etst), a series of scripts and workflow for playing ELAN files and associated audiovisual media in a web browser either on- or off-line. ELAN has become an indispensable part of documentary linguists’ toolkit, but it is less than ideal for mobilizing the transcribed media it allows linguists to create when they have reason to display these materials in non-research settings where linguists are not the primary audience. In conjunction with display of a video or audio file, ETST plays tiers of transcript for overlapping speech, along with optional glosses, and distinguishes speakers with participant codes. Using ETST requires no programming knowledge, but with some such knowledge the tool can be readily customized to suit users’ needs. To that extent, ETST is a simple browser-based transcript player that can be used either as is, “out of the box”, or as a basis for further development. We hope that ETST will be a helpful addition to documentary linguists’ repertoire of digital tools, making it easier for them to share materials with all those who have a stake in their research.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/24726/dobrin_ross.pdf
Primary URL Description: link to article
Secondary URL: http://community.village.virginia.edu/etst/
Secondary URL Description: linke to tool website
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Language Documentation and Conservation
Publisher: Language Documentation and Conservation

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