The Digital Language Diversity Project Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Digital Language Diversity Project

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

As a cornerstone and valuable cultural heritage of Europe, linguistic diversity needs effective measures to ensure its safeguard and promotion. Any sustainable policy in this respect cannot ignore the digital world, as a prominent context of use of the languages.
The mission of DLDP is to advance the sustainability of Europe’s regional and minority languages (RML) in the digital world by empowering their speakers with the awareness, knowledge and abilities about the actions that can be concretely put in place to make their languages survive and possibly advance in the digital context. In the short term, the immediate objectives of DLDP were the following:
– fostering the notion of digital language diversity and vitality and creating awareness about the risk facing regional and minority languages of not being adequately supported from the technological point of view. This has been done extensively and has become (thanks to DLDP) a tenet in the field;
– define strong, clear and actionable recommendations about what needs and can be done for a language “to go digital”: which are the challenges and difficulties, which areas need to be addressed first, which tools are available. The recommendations – named “Digital Language Survival Kit” – also contain a tool (the Digital Language Vitality Scale) for assessing the digital vitality of languages other than those comprised in the case study. This objective has enlarged to become a complete methodology about digital language planning;
– provide a widely applicable training programme, targeted to RML speakers to guide them towards effective production of digital content and in their languages;
– lay out an indication for the immediate future, especially in relation with other projects and initiatives, with a view to national governments and EU institutions.

The DLDP Consortium is composed of five partners: a research department in computational linguistics (CNR-ILC, Italy, Project Coordinator), an NGO working for the protection and promotion of Europe’s regional minority and endangered languages (ELEN, France), an association for the safeguard of Karelian language and culture (Karjalan Kielen Seura, Finland), a foundation devoted to the promotion of Basque in science and technology (Elhuyar Fundazioa, the Basque Country) and the Department of Northern European and Baltic Languages and Cultures of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany).

The main activities of the project revolved around the development of a complete methodology for RML speakers communities for digital language planning, i.e. for evaluating the digital needs of a given speakers’ community, assessing the degree of digital vitality of its language, and then to learn the range of possible actions and activities that can be put in place according to the identified level of vitality.

We thus developed a range of instruments that are the building blocks of this methodology:
– the Digital Language Vitality Scale
– the Digital Language Survival Kits
– a virtual, self-paced training programme, containing self-instruction material and structured into modules, each one addressing a specific topic
– a roadmap, aimed at stakeholders and policy makers, detailing the institutional and technological challenges as well as the proposed solutions for paving the way to a more widespread use of all European languages over digital devices.
Results and impact
First and foremost, the spreading of a new awareness of the issue of digital language diversity and vitality. Over the three years of the project, its contribution to further promote these concepts is without doubt. The partners and project coordinator were often invited to give speeches about the project and its goals, and we can assert that the DLDP “brand” is nowadays strong and well recognised, not only in Europe but overseas as well.
In addition to this, the digital language planning methodology is a completely new instrument in the field of language planning. The Kit is the first collection of recommendations in the area of language digital activism and to date there is no such a comprehensive guide. It is also the first of its kind to be explicitly addressed at the grassroots level. Moreover, the kit is designed in order to be fully flexible and adaptable to suit the needs of any language and linguistic community.
By virtue of its social presence, on Facebook and Twitter, the DLDP has become a hub for news, projects, and initiatives connected with the topics of digital use and usability of (minority) languages.
Last but not least, on 11/9/2018 the European Parliament voted upon the joint CULT/ITRE report on “Language equality in the digital age”, a Report that DLDP helped to draft and highlights the necessity of setting up such a focused and coordinated, long-term research and development action specifically tailored to Europe’s needs and demands in terms of its linguistic diversity.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 352346 Eur

Project Coordinator

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE & Country: IT

Project Partners

• JOHANNES GUTENBERG-UNIVERSITAT MAINZ
• Karjalan Kielen Seura
• European Language Equality Network
• ELHUYAR FUNDAZIOA