DoBeS Programme

Language Endangerment

Currently there are approximately 6000 languages worldwide (many of them with a number of dialects). Following a UNESCO estimate, however, it is assumed that by the end of the 21st century, only one half - maybe even only one tenth - of these languages will continue to exist.

DOBES Programme

In 2000 the VolkswagenFoundation started the DOBES programme in order to document languages that are potentially in danger of becoming extinct within a few years time. In 2000 the pilot phase was started with seven documentation teams and one archiving team, with the intention to come up with recommendations of how language documentation can work, and how the archiving can best be done. Since then, a few new documentation teams are selected on a yearly basis in order to carry out significant documentation work within 3 years. Until now, 50 documentation projects have been funded and there will be calls for concrete documentation projects until 2011. In 2006 the first documentation teams have finished their contractual phase, but many teams still carry on with the documentation work. Yearly workshops are being held in which all past and present documentation projects meet in order to exchange experiences and results.

Language Documentation

The documentation work has two major directions: (1) It can help to maintain or revitalize the language in focus, and (2) it will help to inform future generations about the language diversity and the cultural treasures of mankind.

Therefore, the aims of the DOBES programme are to document languages in their cultural setting and present them in such a way that

• they are useful for linguistics, anthropology, history, comparative literature, and other disciplines;
• they can be understood without prior knowledge of the documented language;
• they can be used for language maintenance and revitalization by the speech community.

Each documentation is carried out in close cooperation with the speech community and reflects the particular characteristics of the respective culture. It is agreed that good documentation has to be based on many recordings as primary material. Audio recordings will present the languages as they are spoken with all their segmental and suprasegmental richness. Video recordings in addition give information about the environment in which languages are spoken and about non-verbal communication attitudes. Given these advantages there is in general a preference for combined audio and video recordings.

All material has to be stored in digital form according to open standards, and the material should be accessible from all over the world via the Internet. In addition, the archive has to take care of the long-term persistency of the digital material, which is not evident given the limited life-time of our state-of-the-art storage media.

The documentation, and therefore the archive, contain the following types of material:

• annotated audio and video recordings of diverse speech events with transcriptions, translations into one or more major languages, morphosyntactic analysis and other comments on content and linguistic phenomena
• photographs and drawings partly bundled into groups of photos documenting processes, as, how to build a house
• music recordings and videos of cultural activities and ceremonies
• a description of the language's genetic affiliation, its socio-linguistic context, its phonetic and grammatical features, and the circumstances of research, recording and documentation
• keyword-based descriptions to facilitate the organization and accessibility of documents in the archive

Technology in DOBES

From the beginning the DOBES programme wanted to take advantage of modern state-of-the-art technology, and where necessary drive technology to suite the needs of the documentation work. Therefore, the following topics were discussed and widely agreed upon, in particular in the pilot phase

• specifications for archival document formats to promote long-term accessibility
• recommendations for recording and analysis formats, and tools to ensure quality and reduce the conversion effort
• the creation of new tools that support the audio/video annotation work, the metadata creation and the navigation in metadata domains, advanced web-based frameworks to access and enrich archived resources.

Given the dramatic situation of recordings of cultures and languages in general (according to a UNESCO overview about 80% of the storage media are subject to heavy chemical/physical deterioration) it was important to provide other contributors with the possibility of depositing valuable material into the archive. Therefore, web-based technology was built to allow the upload of new material or new versions into the archive. This technology can also be used by the DOBES teams to continue their work after the ending of their official DOBES phase.

Steering Board

A Steering Board is coordinating the activities and addressing common issues within the DOBES programme. In particular, its members work out a program for the workshops. The current members of the Steering Board are:

• Ulrike Mosel (Chair, Univeristy of Kiel)
• Linda Barwick (University of Sydney)
• Gertrud Boden (University of Cologne)
  
• Jost Gippert (University of Frankfurt)
• Dagmar Jung (University of Cologne)
• Alexander Loch (Centre Asie Sud-Est, Paris)
  
• Frank Seifart (University of Regensburg)
  
• Thomas Widlok (MPI Nijmegen)
  
• Peter Wittenburg (MPI Nijmegen)