Vera Ferreira presented the subject – Preserving, discovering, and exploring the immaterial cultural heritage in the digital era – to all MD3’s teams in one of our Geek Sessions.
She is a trained linguist with a background in language documentation and field research. Her main research interests lie in European endangered languages and in the connection between documentary data and language revitalization.
Geek Sessions’ main goals are to allow people, mainly from MD3, to discuss new subjects that might be related to problems in their work/interests. It is also the place to share or expose interests to the company and community.
It’s not exclusively for developers because it aims at subjects from design to development. Geek Sessions rech as many areas as possible within the company’s domain and world.
Preserving, discovering, and exploring the immaterial cultural heritage in the digital era, with Vera Ferreira
Vera Ferreira is a trained linguist with a background in language documentation and field research. Her main research interests lie in European endangered languages and in the connection between documentary data and language revitalization.
Vera Ferreira fell in love with Minderico, a language spoken in Minde, municipality of Alcanena, about 20 years ago.
Born in Batalha, Leiria, her father went to work for Minde and brought her a small book with a few words in Minderico. Since then, she tried to learn and investigate more about the language. Minderico was the main reason why she specialized in endangered language documentation.
Nowadays, she is head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation (CIDLeS) and Archive Support and Development Officer at the Endangered Languages Archive (SOAS University of London).
As the digital archivist, Vera provides advice and training on all aspects of data management, metadata preparation, and digital archiving.
Vera is co-founder and Head of CIDLes, a non-profit institution founded in January 2010 in Minde (Portugal) by a group of national and international researchers.
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation (CIDLeS) aims to improving and deepening research in two linguistic areas: language documentation and linguistic typology. Besides the documentation, study and dissemination of European endangered and minority languages CIDLeS is also engaged in the development of language technologies for scientific and didactic work on lesser-used languages.
From http://cidleseu.de13.fcomet.com/our-mission/mission-statement/
Life cycle of language documentation materials
As a Digital Archivist, at SOAS University of London, Vera manages the full project lifecycle of language documentation materials at the archive end (ingestion, evaluation, and processing of materials and formats, curation, upload, access setting, catalog display).
She also diagnoses and troubleshoots problems with data and metadata. Reviews and approves data management plans prepare and administrate legal documentation around deposits. Organizes and trains lexicography and semantics, video conversion, linguistic and metadata software (e.g. ELAN, FLEx, Arbil, CMDI Maker), metadata and data management workflows, and digital archiving.
Society lives at a frenetic pace and most of us don’t have time to take care of ourselves as we should. Let alone think about topics like the one presented in this Geek Session, whose importance is greater than we can imagine.
That is why MD3 invited Vera Ferreira to discuss languages in danger of extinction, how to reverse this rampant trend, and preserve a cultural heritage that is the identity of so many communities.
How are minorities who don’t speak Mandarin, Arabic, or English included in technology?
In a passionate and, at the same time, apprehensive way, Vera explained to us that there are 7000 languages spoken all over the world. Twenty-three of those are dominant and 3000 are on the verge of extinction. There are 90% of the 7 thousand who are conditioned in this digital era because they simply don’t speak a dominant language. Impressive, isn’t it?
There is much more at stake than ecological balance. The relevance of languages in the economy, livelihood, and people’s lives is unavoidable.
An excellent job has been done at the level of the digital linguistic archive.
There is an increasing contribution with videos, documents, and other records that are meticulously handled by ELAR (Endangered Languages Archive). They are available online, for free access, through the creation of a user account.
The entire database behind this platform has priceless immaterial cultural heritage value, which extends to the most remote generations. A source of precious information for education and training, intellectuals, film producers, poets, and researchers from different areas, among others.
One of the most important details to facilitate access and search for information is metadata. And these can be an uphill climb.
If, on the one hand, the quantity and quality of metadata used to browse digital linguistic archives is done in English and allows (almost) all users to be able to do research, on the other, natives of minority languages, are automatically excluded unless they speak English. This is a key point to take into account when configuring the files.
The battle to preserve cultural and linguistic heritage in the digital world doesn’t stop there. There are major challenges to face:
- the costs of storing information (increasingly audiovisual, occupying more space)
- the costs of hiring programmers who propose to work on this subject for much less than what they could earn in private for-profit companies and, finally
- the costs of disseminating knowledge (portals, accesses, apps, data usage security, and so on).
It’s not just language that unites us!
Two final notes:
“It’s not just language that unites us!” – Vera said when faced with a pertinent question on the topic.
“In Portugal, the financial support for this type of project came only from the European Union!” – replied our guest when we asked her if she feels that the Government should support this cause, which concerns us all.
The immaterial cultural heritage in the digital era is an unknown subject that MD3 brings up. A process of awareness needs to take place in society so that no one is left behind in this unbridled race for the future.
Watch the full Geek Session
Don’t miss a thing about this interesting subject and find out more about the immaterial cultural heritage in the digital era, with Vera Ferreira, below.
