I have setup an endowment I have been working on with a large
university, several Federally recognized Tribes, and several
outside financial contributors to support foundation projects for Native
Language Preservation and have been discussing it
with the Foundations attorneys for several months. I am nearing
closure on the endowment and have obtained committments from several
large charitable groups. The endowment is seeking total contributions
of $10,000,000.00 to fund Wikipedia Language programs
and content promotion, publishing, and educational programs for Native
American Communities. A percentage of these contributions are
slated to be applied to approved Foundation projects which support these
programs.
I would like for interested community members who have an interest in
working on Language preservation programs for languages
which will require machine assisted translation and direct machine
translation to consider submitting project proposals identifying
language groups which would benefit from such a program. Please submit
any written proposals to myself and Brad Patrick
for review (if Brad wants to see them that is, otherwise, send them to
me directly). The Foundation has no direct agreements
with this program beyond shared community goals, but any programs where
it chooses to contribute or be involved are welcome,
and programs which have shared resources will of course have shared
access to funding opportunities.
I invite anyone who can identify languages which could benefit from such
a program in any area or country where these languages
are in danger of being lost forever to consider making proposals. You
need to be a native speaker of these languages if you want us
to seriously consider working with you on such a program. All
languages are welcome if any Native Speakers wish to contribute
time to assist in creating a vehicle to package Wikimedia into
accreditted educational porgrams.
Sincerely,
Jeff