Tracking Language Digitization in the UNESCO World Atlas
The UNESCO World Atlas of Languages (WAL) is an interactive and dynamic online tool that documents different aspects and features of language status in countries and languages around the world.
Information is being provided by governments, national departments of statistics, public language harmonization and standardization organizations, and higher educational organizations, which are mandated to carry out fundamental research and collect official data.
As part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, Translation Commons is partnering with UNESCO to update the World Atlas of Languages (WAL) by defining digitization data and associated metrics that can track vitality. This will create awareness for language digitization and inform whether Indigenous languages are making progress in digitization, whether the tools and support for language digitization are effective generally, and perhaps whether there are languages or regions where they are less effective. This information can lead to improving methodologies and practices, accelerate digitization of languages and predict language vitality efforts.
This is important as 6,000+ of the 8,000+ spoken and signed languages used on earth today are not available on digital systems. 3,000 of those languages will be extinct by the year 2100. This represents a loss of cultural identity and heritage diverse and alternative viewpoints knowledge, for example medicinal, agricultural, practical, etc. and especially regional knowledge and expertise
Language preservation and digitization also gives a voice to communities that might otherwise be marginalized.
This presentation will describe the WAL and how we are proposing to measure digitization status for each language. We will also describe how the data will be collected and made open and accessible. We will encourage discussion of how the proposal can be improved.