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

Hi everyone!

I’m cross posting this, so first of all I’m sorry if you have to read the mail more than once.

Today I’m writing to you 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, 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.pdf 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