LinguaLibre:Workshops

Draft

This page is a work in progress.

Rapid demo

User Interface and teaching principles.

On site workshop

Example: 2021 INALCO.

Online workshop

Example: ContribuLing 2021.

Workshop at ContribuLing 2021 (in French)

Personal challenge

"One rooster does not weave a morning,
he will always need the other roosters…"
—— João Cabral de Melo Neto - Weaving the Morning, Brazilian poem cited by Marreromarco.

User:Titodutta early 2021's 50,000 words challenge was a personal challenge lead by Bengali speaker Titodutta to record 50,000 words in his native language, Bengali. Titodutta contributed nearly daily for 2 months, fast catching up and passing over the most productive speakers. His effort alone rose Bengali among the top 2 languages of LinguaLibre.

User:Marreromarco's year long challenge project is a personal goal to record 400 words daily in his “local” variety of Spanish. After 365 days, we will have 146,000 Spanish words on Lingua Libre ! There are ~22 million learners of Spanish that could benefit from this "Personal" Challenge on Lingua Libre!

Sponsorship

Example: Cantonese 2020.

A private citizen paying an audio-voice professional to records a list of words in his language is also a de facto option. Wikimedia cannot, by rule, pay for content. But given the high productivity of Lingualibre's studio (Special:RecordWizard), it becomes affordable, efficient, and profitable for private citizen or institutions to lead such operation, hire an audio professional who will mass record. A first experiment was made with Cantonese. A modest 300€ lead to the creation of 5,000+ audios files within 3 weeks. These 5,000 words make up around 95% of daily Cantonese conversations. Cantonese can therefore be considered as largely covered, on the teaching side at least. For a more exhaustive coverage, 30,000 would be a better target.

This approach is especially needed and promising for rare languages, where volunteer contributors are and will stay hard to find. Sometimes, sponsoring contribution could boost a language. With such low amounts involved, a private or institutional donor can likely be found.

Editathon

Example: n.a.

Editathons aim to gather and synchronize a group of interested users into editing Lingualibre's content pages. It could be to improve our documentations (Help:*), project space (LinguaLibre:*), translate or curate words lists for your language (List:*/*), communication materials, prepare a funding request (Grants table) or any one full day or more sprint organized by the community.

Hackathon

Lingualibre:Hackathon, Lingualibre:Events/2022 Hackathon.

Example: 2018 at Wikimedia France's Paris headquarter.

Hackathon aim to gather and synchronize a group of interested users into taking over Lingualibre's codes (see github.com/lingua-libre) and features/bugs tickets (phabricator:tag/lingua_libre).

Skills we are looking for are mainly organizational skills for events management, then JS and VueJS (web developments) ; PHP (mediawiki) ; Python (bots).

List translation editathon

See Help:List translation, Surui, Ladino and Kikuyu ongoing efforts.

As we go toward smaller communities, there is higher probability that no open license word list exists. In that case, the most effective path is to translate frequency list from one of the macro languages equally spoken by this community. This translation will quickly provide a solid bilingual lexicon, to be completed by typical local words. Another strong point of this approach is, local activists can be guided and mentored via the web by experienced Lingualibre users, linguists or lexicographers. In doing so, many more communities are at reach. In best cases scenario, bilingual e-dictionaries, e-learning app or even paper dictionary can be produced by such project.

Field linguist workshops

Example 2022 LinguaLibre-Surui workshop.

Field linguists are the people who study a language by going into the target community and describing real world usages. By extension, in the context of LinguaLibre, field workshops are all efforts where a LinguaLibrist actively contact a target community to build lexicographic and audio-lexicographic content with them. The volunteer(s) takes a wide range of roles such as:

• advocate for open content
• ambassador for lingualibre
• coordinator
• guide for lexical list management : picking the right list or list translation
• event organizer
• Lingualibre app trainer
• List review and clean up
• translator between LinguaLibre's English resources and local community's language
• traveler

This global mission will likely include IRL travels, for which some refunds options are available, see Template:Grants table and Wikimedia Micro-fi. One such 2022 training session in Paris had a budget of 1,000€ for one trainer and one speaker meeting up from 1,000km away and working on Surui language. In this case, both the trainer from Bayonna and the speaker from Brazil met in an intermediate city, Paris. A better heuristic could be pre-arranged field linguistic journeys, one week long and well pre-planned, where a LinguaLibre volunteer-trainer visit the target community and ready-to-contribute locals to constitute within a week a 5,000+ words dictionary on a 1,000€ budget.

Outreach workshops

Existing document may be reprinted and sent to various local groups.

Example: Lingualibre:Events/2023 Editathon. See also :Commons:Category:Lingua Libre outreach.

A vastly overlooked aspect of Lingualibre is the networking and communication side. Following April 2021 site-wide upgrade, LinguaLibre's rapid-recording-as-a-service is technically stable, mature, and satisfying. The real need is in letting the outside world know how the recording studio makes rapidly and clean audio recording possible and easy. Early outreach has been limited to French Wikimedians and as since expanded toward European and Indic Wikimedians. These Wikimedia groups returns are unbalanced by geography and gender.

1. On demographic, the simplicity of the recording studio actually make contributing to LinguaLibre accessible to all public, 7-99 years old. Outreach needs and opportunities are toward older, younger, and more feminine groups.
2. On geography, an effort is underway to translate the recording studio, but similarly, outreach to local communities abroad is missing.
3. On institutional side, various existing community have been working to document the diversity of languages for years already. These volunteer or academic communities have better field experience, trust, contacts with diverse languages. On these sides we can cite the Endangered Language Alliances of New York City (elalliance.org), the National Institute of Languages and Civilisations in Paris (100+ languages), the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London (~35 languages), the UNESCO, etc.

Each of these groups has various subgroups, not aware of how « LinguaLibre makes rapid, clean, mass recording possible ». There are opportunities to gently ping these communities via multiples entries points, assess these communities actual appetite for rapid recording, send them flyers ? The field is actually quite new, with custom and hybrid solutions to find.

Funding editathon

Example: Wikimédia France's Microfi. See also LinguaLibre:Grants.

Funding editathons are sprints aiming to apply to available fundings in order to fund medium to heavy projects, which needs more than a regular volunteer and segmented small pushes to be properly achieve. It first requires defining your project and potential funding avenue. Define your project (1), scooting for available funding (2), deep reading of the required application format (3) and mostly, the writing of a solid and decent project draft can be the focus of a one or two days editathon. If involving several contributors IRL, such event allows community building and various strategic discussions. Also, reasonable transportation, food, and venue costs can be funded by WMFR or WMF's Rapid Funds as well.

Funded project's phases: Phases 1 to 4 are suitable for editathons.

1. Define: core project design with problem to solve, actions to lead (objectives), type (community, research, technology), actors and budget.
2. Orientation: identify the relevant funding program to apply to ?
3. Format: read their requirements, deadlines, application format ; identify a previous application able to best serve as model.
4. Write: write down a solid project draft.
5. Iterate and polish.
6. Apply: submit and follow process
7. Work
8. Report
9. Close

Major funding avenues: The table below is an indicative summary, for authoritative values, please check each programs' pages. To clarify if your idea fits your target Fund's requirement and rules, please read their documentation and engage with their team. Grants can be allocated to organizing forces: individuals, groups or institutions. See meta:Template:Grants.

See also

• LinguaLibre:Events
• LinguaLibre:Roles
• LinguaLibre:Mailing
• LinguaLibre:Jargon
• {{Grants table}}