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MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2002

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute are helping indigenous people in North and South America preserve their languages by developing computer translation programs.

Developing such programs can be timely and costly so the researchers are looking for ways to shortcut the development and put it in the hands of Native people. One method is called "elicitations," which a computer uses to learn the usage of a particular language when translated by a Native speaker.

Researchers have been working with Inupiat Eskimos with the Inupiaq language, Mapuche from Chile who speak Mapudungun and Sionas of Colombia.

Get the Story:
Scientists at CMU join forces to create a program to preserve vanishing languages (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1/14)

Relevant Links:
Language Technologies Institute, CMU - http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu
Worldwatch Institute - http://www.worldwatch.org