Tl;dr
European project for Language Equality // Invitation to fill in a survey
about Language Equality and Language Technology: https://t1p.de/5voc //
Bringing the perspective of the Wikimedia movement to the European level
Dear everyone,
Today I’m writing to you all to ask for your help with a project concerning
language technologies, the Wikimedia movement and under-resourced European
languages.
Wikimedia Deutschland is supporting an EC-funded project called “European
Language Equality” (https://european-language-equality.eu/). The vision
that this project is working towards is to achieve full digital language
equality for all European languages - including all 24 official languages,
but also minority and regional languages (
https://european-language-equality.eu/languages/) - by 2030.
In order to prepare for this ambitious goal a partner consortium of 52
organisations (language associations, universities, language technology
providers etc.) will be working on creating a roadmap for European
commission programs and activities in the next year.
This roadmap and those policies should also include the view of the
Wikimedia movement and our perspective, needs and challenges on so-called
language technologies. A brief explanation of language technologies can be
found here (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_Communication_Technologies#Today)
and here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_technology).
*Why am I writing this to you?*
I’m currently reaching out to people in the movement whose voices should be
heard in this process. This includes (but is not limited to) editors of
small language Wikipedias, editors of European language Wikipedias,
Wikidata editors, Wiktionary editors, editors of Lexemes, Lingua Libre
volunteers, edit-a-thon organizers etc. etc. - In short, everyone in our
movement who is interested in languages and keeping languages thriving. At
the Arctic Knot (the Wikimedia Language conference), I had the chance to
talk about this project (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:(ELE)_Presentation_at_Arctic_Knot.p…)
and the ways of participating in it.
*What am I asking of you exactly?*
One of the project leaders (Dublin City University) has created a survey
for users of language technology and their demands as well as predictions
of the future of European languages. With the answers of this survey, the
partners (one of them being Wikimedia Deutschland) will write a report on
our perspective on the future of European languages and language
technologies.
I hope to include as many people from the movement as possible in this
consultation process and invite you to fill in the survey. Also, if you
want to spread the survey throughout your community - please do so!
------ Filling in the survey will take about 20 minutes, the data
protection guidelines are stated at the beginning of the survey. The survey
will be open until September 10th. You can get to the survey here:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/LTusers-consumers-wiki. ----
Thank you for reading this mail, please let me know if you have any
questions or remarks or further suggestions! If you don’t feel comfortable
filling in the survey but still want your perspective to be included, feel
free to write me an e-mail.
Cheers from Berlin,
Maria
--
Maria Heuschkel
Projektmanagerin
Softwareentwicklung
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
https://wikimedia.de
Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der Menschheit
teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.