Transcoding Documents to Unicode

Unicode has been a hot topic for the past few years. Yet, many organizations still hesitate to move to Unicode, mainly because they have a huge collection of archives and documents, and they don't have the right tools to do just that.
Good news: we have those tools, and ever better, we have the required expertise to develop new tools. Attached is an example of batch transcoding of a language database, from a legacy font (non-Unicode) to Unicode.

Linguasoft booth at Language Industry Showcase 2009

For the third year in a row, we have had a great pleasure to expose our language preservation process and tools. We thank all our visitors, coming from various parts of the world (by the way, language preservation is a worldwide topic - right?)

Getting it Right with Wordwrapping in Syllabics

What does that mean? Well... bad luck for languages that use a non-Roman writing system. Lots of syllabic fonts are based on remapping the roman symbols to syllabic symbols. That means that letter 'a' becomes one syllabic symbol, 'b' another one, etc.
Text processing is based on rules. Let's consider wordwrapping: in English, you can split 'dual-purpose' on two lines: 'dual-', then new line, then 'purpose'. In French you can split 'dedans/dehors' the same way. What happens if roman '-' and '/' were mapped to some syllabic symbols that have nothing to do with punctuation? You get wrong wordwrapping: a word gets split where it should not get split.
We designed a wordwrapping module for syllabics, splitting words the right way.
The screenshot show the original (and incorrect) wordwrapping in yellow field 'Definition': as syllabic 'vaa' (last symbol of 1st line) is mapped to roman '/', the software wraps the word after the 'vaa'. The green field shows that the word containing the 'vaa' does not get split, but gets sent as a whole to the next line.

Transliterating Roman to Syllabics

Question: How to transliterate a database from Roman to Syllabics?
Answer: call us ASAP!
We have completed the development of a roman-to-syllabics transliterator. Well, the project was to transliterate a FileMaker database containing traditional placenames from Roman alphabet to non-Unicode Syllabics and Unicode Syllabics. Our new application actually does more than just transliterating: it is able to process spelling errors in a special way.

Linguasoft at AILIA 2008

The yearly AILIA showcase offers a unique opportunity to all actors of the language industry to meet, share experiences, and promote their projects.
Taking part in this showcase has been a tradition for us now.
Be welcome on our booth next year!

New module for sorting texts in Inuktitut

We developed a FileMaker plug-in for a client's database project. It allows for sorting words according to the Inuktitut syllabarium. Roman alphabet is ordered as "a/b/c/d", whereas the Inuktitut syllabarium is ordered as "ai/i/u/a/pai/pi/pu/pa...".
In order to provide a faithful and useful list of words (lexicon, dictionary, thesaurus...) it is crucial that the traditional sort order of the language be respected.
Technically, we developed this plug-in in C. It runs on both PC and Mac, and provides the same programming interface on both platforms, allowing for portable databases and applications.

Reversing Language Shift

Is there anything we can do against that modern plague that contributes to endangering the languages of our world, called "language shift" (see our post below on language shift)?
One possible path to a better future for language diversity is "reverse language shift", abbreviated as RLS.
Joshua A. Fishman wrote a 415-page book that became a reference in the field, it is available on Google Books

Inuktitut dictionary in progress (trilingual version)

We are currently working on a trilingual dictionary (Inuktitut, French, English) for a client. Our job is to sort a pretty huge amount of data in both syllabics and roman alphabet, preprocess it, filter it, do some transcoding and translitteration as well, merge the three languages so that each dictionary entry is in the three languages and can be search as such. Icing on the cake, we'll provide our client with a collection of multilingual reports in various formats.
This project will be released on CD as a Beta Version in 2009.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls for protection of all endangered languages

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message on the International Day of the World's Indigenous People, August 9, 2008 called on States, indigenous peoples, the UN system and all relevant actors to take immediate steps to protect and promote endangered languages.

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Linguasoft presentation in Domagaya, during Quebec City's 400th anniversary

This was an honor to present our technology and process for preserving languages, at this historical event held in Quebec City. Our partnership with SAT gave us the pleasure to hold our booth in the Satosphere, a wonderful immersive environment designed and developed by SAT, dubbed Domagaya for the celebration.
Our booth had a lot of attendance of visitors from various countries and cultures. Besides presenting our products and services, we also took every opportunity to promote other language maintenance initiatives.

Japanese Diet officially declares Ainu indigenous

The Ainu celebrated a historic moment Friday as the Diet unanimously passed a resolution that recognizes them as indigenous people of Japan.
The unprecedented resolution was adopted by both chambers, acknowledging the Ainu's hardships from discrimination and poverty.
"This is a historical event for us because the past injustices were finally put to an end," said Tadashi Kato, chairman of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, who came to Tokyo to hear the Diet resolution from the gallery. "I am so thankful that the light has shone on us," he said, his voice full of emotion.

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Language Shift

Wikipedia has a brief article on a key concept for language preservation and revitalization.

Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of... (More)

Land Insights unveils (some) secrets of upcoming First Peoples' Festival...

As always, the team of Land Insights is busy promoting and sharing on Native cultures. They invited us to a sneak preview of what is coming up for this year's edition of First Peoples' Festival. André Dudemaine is just explaining that to us on the picture here.
Also, this is another tradition in this yearly preview, artists join the event and do performances. Today we had Mike (he sang a blues in Innu... that was outstanding), and Odaya, a group of Native singers from various Communities in Canada, who sang and drummed beautifully.
This event was a blessing... we can't wait till the Festival kicks off...

Designing our technology for universal input

For the past four years our tools (both hardware and software) have become more and more popular. No wonder. We are the only organization that is ready to invest as much time as required into R&D for endangered languages. We love working on any language, without any limitation on its linguistic features or on its speaker base...
We capitalize on everything we create. We do reutilization of our own technology, from one language to another.
We have just kicked off a project that will federate all our input modules into a universal technology. The goal is to provide a tool that is easy to use for everyone:
* Each language;
* Each generation;
* Each computer.
Maybe you are part of the computer users who have to press 'f' to get the 'ti' glyph, or Alt-Minus to get a 'vai', or maybe Alt-Shift-Slash to get a 'vaa'?
Good news for you: those days will soon be over!
Stay tuned.

Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights

This is some info I'd like to share with you here. This declaration was signed in Barcelona in June 1996. It is a very well-structured document, starting with a reference to another famous Declaration

Having regard to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, in its preamble, expresses its «faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women»; and which, in its second article, establishes that «everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms» regardless of «race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status»;

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New Year = New Resolutions

Happy New Year to all our clients, partners, and brothers/sisters in language preservation.
This year again, Linguasoft will allocate the most part of its profits to language preservation, on its three axis of research :
- hardware keyboards ;
- software ;
- coaching.
This is just the logical continuation of our long-term strategy for helping linguistic communities that are interested in preserving their language. And we mean it.

Message from Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, on the celebration of 2008, International Year of Languages

The year 2008 has been proclaimed International Year of Languages by the United Nations General Assembly. UNESCO, which has been entrusted with the task of coordinating activities for the Year, is determined to fulfil its role as lead agency

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Our booth at AILIA 2007 in Ottawa

As expected, this fair was a great event of the Canadian language industry. The success of our booth exceeded our expectations. We met all sort of actors of the industry, in those three main areas: translation, education and technology. More than a networking event, this exhibition left us with the very positive impression that:

• we are part of an industry which has a clear ambition;

• we are members of a dynamic association that takes its role very seriously.

Warmest congratulations to AILIA team for their constant involvement.

Wapikoni Mobile event at SAT

This is a wonderful project. We've seen them start 3 years ago, and we've seen their dedication for Aboriginal cultures. Since 2004, the Wapikoni Mobile has been travelling around 11 Aboriginal communities in remote areas of Quebec. A veritable herd of nomadic artists, Wapikoni Mobile has offered digital technology training to 650 young people from the Algonquin, Atikamekw, Cree, Innu and Mohawk nations. With both cultural and social ambitions, Wapikoni mobile offers these young people a new way of talking about and seeing the world.You are invited to join the Wapikoni Mobile team during a celebration of their 2007 achievements at a cocktail party version of its now traditional annual launch, presented for a fourth consecutive year at the FNC. On the menu: an evening that melds tradition and new technologies, featuring a sage purification ceremony, hip-hop and folk performances, and film screenings. Discover some 15 short films made by Aboriginal filmmakers who have travelled from far and wide to be here with you. Wapikoni Mobile is an initiative of filmmaker Manon Barbeau, in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada and in collaboration with Les productions des beaux jours.
Pictures show: Ghislain Picard (Regional Chief of Quebec and Labrador of Assembly of First Nations); Manon Barbeau and a group of trainees; and a traditional band from Pointe Bleue and Manawan.

All pictures of this post are © www.renaudkasma.com 2007.
BTW: if you haven't yet visited Renaud's Website, then now is the right time.

Linguasoft joins AILIA

We are proud members of AILIA, the Language Industry Association. Its mission is to promote and increase the competitiveness of the Canadian language industry nationally and internationally through advocacy, accreditation and information sharing. AILIA's defined a Technology Roadmap, whose mandate is to establish a technology strategy for the language industry as a whole that will contribute to increasing language industry productivity and success. Here are its subcommitees, active in several domains of the language industry where technology is of the essence:

Speech Processing Subcommittee

The Speech Processing Subcommittee’s mandate is to assist Canadian Speech Processing Companies...

Translation Subcommittee

The Translation Subcommittee’s mandate is to create the most innovative and globally accepted solutions for Canadian Language Industry service providers based on linguistic skills, workflow process and technology.

Content Management Subcommittee

The Content Management Subcommittee’s mandate is to define the content management sub-sector of language industry and the relation between language processing and information processing...

Language Training Subcommittee

The Language Training Subcommittee’s mandate is to define how technological innovation can position Canada's language training industry competitively within today's global marketplace; define promising areas for language training technology development and integration...

Telepresence between Yukon and Montreal

While I was in Yukon, I had a chance to participate in a telepresence session with SAT in Montreal. On the right-hand side of the first photo, you can see René from SAT with his mike, and on the left, here I am, speaking with René and a bunch of his guests. On the second picture, you see René handing the mike to a guest from Thailand! The network connection was very good, and we had a nice user experience.

Language Preservation in Yukon

This is a great honor for us that the Government of the Selkirk First Nation has invited us to their community. We will apply our LPP (Language Preservation Process) in order to coach some community members on preserving Northern Tutchone. You can see a few pictures from Yukon, as well as a traditional fishing net of the community. I was lucky enough to be invited on a fishing camp: we were able to interview Elders and adults about (and in) the language, and also make various recording of traditional activities, with and for the community. This includes setting fishing nets and a real-life moose hunt from spotting the moose, to gutting and cutting it, and up to loading all the meat on the boat.
I did not only share meat and fish with the community members, I also shared superb moments.
You know what? I miss them already...

Linguasoft booth at First Peoples' Festival 2007

This year again, we took part in this outstanding festival. Attached photos show the booth we had at NFB and also at SAT. There's also a fish-eye view of the outdoor events at Parc Emilie-Gamelin downtown Montréal, and a picture of a traditional workbench for woodwork.

UN proclaims 2008 as Year of Languages

That's quite an exciting news... This was Austria's idea to promote 2008 as such, at UNESCO's 33rd General Conference in Paris. The UN General Assembly will aim to promote unity through linguistic diversity. The Assembly called upon States and the Secretariat to work towards the conservation and defence of the world's languages and requested the Secretariat to appoint a coordinator for multilingualism.

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Linguasoft at the Conference on the Endangered Languages and Cultures of America (CELCNA 2007)

What an outstanding event! And another example how some very motivated and brilliant people can do wonders with limited funding...
I presented a paper titled “Technology: a double-edged sword for endangered languages of Native America”. The multidisciplinarity of this paper brought its share of challenges:

• talking about languages to an audience mainly consisting of Natives, expert in their language, of BA's, MA's and PhD's in linguistics (without being an academic linguist myself!);
• talking about PhD-level research in technology to the same audience, without overwhelming them with too-detailed technical information;
• in order to bring some progression in this paper, I had to start with very general data on the current status of languages before I moved on to technology... the aforementioned audience was of course well aware of most of this general data.
  

Challenges being opportunities, the audience was actually very attentive to my presentation, and I received smart questions and a very positive feedback, along with encouragements to carry on the job and come back to next year's conference...
The global climate of this conference was amazingly positive: not only during presentations, but also during social gatherings. In this three-day conference we were able to check out three restaurants (at the Brazilian Grill on the photo)... not too bad, huh???

Linguasoft member of Center for American Indian Languages

This Center is also known as CAIL. It is based on the campus of the University of Utah, SLC. Yet another team of brilliant researchers, teachers and students. Their linguistic works are definitely targeted on language preservation. They do a yearly conference. Guess what? I'll be presenting a paper there, about our R&D in technology for language preservation.

Land Insights event

André Dudemaine and Christine Sioui are unveiling the official poster for 2007' edition of First Peoples' Festival. We had the opportunity to listen to Coyotzin's beautiful, peaceful and gracious music. He made several of his instruments himself. His 3rd CD has just been released. The audience had fun listening to Comicmac, a humorist from the Micmac Nation in Québec; his style is very original, based on his own experiences of life as a Metis.

Linguasoft on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network

We were honored that APTN broadcast in their National News a report on our technologies yesterday at prime time and today at noon. We had an outstanding feedback from throughout Canada. People are encouraging us and show interest in building projects with us. Both an honor and a pleasure for us.
The video is available there:
- in Real Media format : http://www.Linguasoft.com/press/aptn_30_01_2007.ram
- in Windows Media Video format: http://www.Linguasoft.com/press/aptn_30_01_2007.wmv

Special thanks to Danielle, Daniel, Cheryl and their teams for their interest and great professionalism.

Pushing the bar higher for investing our profits into R&D

It is a tradition now. Every year, we reinject a significant part of our profits into Research & Development on language preservation. And years passing prove it is a good tradition: all the projects that Aboriginal communities gave us are an enchantment. Expect exciting new development in 2007!

Releasing our Language Preservation Process

We've been working hard on it for the past two years. Now it's pretty well structured. It's basically a multidisciplinary approach to language preservation: it provides a methodology, a toolbox, and a supervision based on coaching (rather than teaching). Stay tuned.

Linguasoft participation to 10th International Conference on Endangered Languages

I was happy enough to present our technologies at FEL X "Vital Voices" in Mysore, India. Besides getting very encouraging feedback from participants, we were honored to meet a panel of experts in linguistics and language preservation. What a great event this was!

Aboriginal Peoples of the World: current challenges

Don't miss this conference at UQAM in Montreal. Organized by "Centre d’études sur le droit international et la mondialisation (CEDIM)" with the collaboration of "Droits et Démocratie". With:
- Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Rapporteur spécial des Nations Unies sur les droits de l’homme et libertés fondamentales des peuples autochtones
- Vicky Tauli Corpuz, Présidente de l’Instance permanente de l’ONU sur les questions autochtones
- Mohammed Kemal Rezag-Bara

U.N. declaration on rights of Indigenous people signed

After more than 20 years in the pipeline, the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was finally approved on June 29. More.

Linguasoft.com translated into Spanish

There we are. At last. Our site is now available in Spanish. As we've been making lots of promising contacts with Aboriginals from South America, it was sort of "a duty" for us to have a Spanish version of our site so as to be accessible to more people (and peoples). When we say "more", we do mean "more", like a few hundreds of millions of surfers del Sur!

Promising exchange with Bernard Saladin d'Anglure

Mr Saladin d'Anglure is an internationally recognized expert and pioneer in Inuit studies. Besides being fluent in Inuktitut, he has dedicated his life as an anthropologist to the Inuit culture. I had a chance to:

• buy his latest book Naître et renaître Inuit, homme, femme ou chamane and get an autograph;
  
• converse with him about what we do as a technology company for Inuktitut.
  

He had heard about us through Avataq Cultural Institute (yes, we're quite proud...). I understood he found them innovative and reliable. Needless to say, the exchange was intense, and will very likely give way to further exchanges and, very hopefully, a collaboration.

First Peoples' Festival 2006 resumes

After a two-week break, the Festival settles for 5 more days in the Parc Emilie Gamelin, downtown Montreal. Just like previous years. First pictures show Festival's Director André Dudemaine, from LandInSights with Chief Obomsawin, and then with Mr Geoffrey Kelley, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. Last photo show traditional clay pipes. Well, reproductions of clay pipes, made with passion by an expert who studied traditional techniques. Original pipes are over five centuries old.

Our booth at Aboriginal Youth Day at SAT

SAT and LandInsights have this magic touch when it comes to organizing outstanding events. This was the last day of the first part of First Peoples' Festival here in Montreal. National Film Board was a partner (among others) of this first part. We had a chance to see very good movies from various Aboriginal Nations from North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Last but not least, our booth at NFB and SAT made the magic happen: we met many people, from many culture, and they all shared our vision about how technology must be adapted to protect languages rather than endanger them. Besides our Inuktitut keyboard, Inuktitut transliterator and Inuktitut transcoder, we presented our Cree keyboard, Blackfoot keyboard and Cherokee keyboard.
Oh, should we mention that we made very promising business contacts?
BTW, very special thanks to SAT, LandInsights and NFB. We mean it.

Our booth at First Peoples' Festival in Montreal

We have a booth at ONF/NFB (Office National du Film/National Film Board) on St-Denis @ De Maisonneuve from May 26 thru June 7. Come and see us. We'll show you our new borns. Hardware keyboards for Cree, Blackfoot and Cherokee. Déné coming up soon. So far, visitors' feedback is very positive and extremely encouraging. Our Inuktitut keyboard, Inuktitut transliterator and Inuktitut transcoder remain very popular. Hard work pays off. Again, people systematically mention the human dimension of our project. They're 100% right.

First Peoples' Festival: Awards ceremony

This was hosted by McCord Museum here in Montreal. The venue was packed. Alanis Obomsawin is opening the event. Needless to say, this ceremony is very well appreciated by both the audience and the artists. What's more, it give a good overview of the movies (the "big picture", just for the 'pun' of it :-) that are played at National Film Board during the festival.

Article about new Linguasoft keyboards in "La Presse"

Dated today, available on LapresseAffaires.com
By Nelson Dumais

Sky Bellefleur at the Spectrum!!!

My Dear Friend Sky performed on stage at the Spectrum, in the first part of Xavier Rudd's show tonight. She first moved the whole audience (venue was total packed), and then simply set it on fire. I was there, so you can trust me.

Second performer was an outstanding didgeridoo player from Australia. He did set the audience on fire as well. Unbelievable was the variety of sounds he was able to make on his intrument.

Then came Xavier, a multi-instrumentist as you can see on the picture.

Avataq's book on Tivi Etok: glad to contribute

It was a pleasure getting on board this project of book on Tivi Etok: "The world of Tivi Etok". Our mission was to coordinate media gathering and prepare the detailed printing instructions for the printing company. We can't wait to see this book in its final, off-the-shelf printed version.

National Aboriginal Connectivity and E-services Forum 2006

That was a great 5th forum organized by Aboriginal Canada Portal, with the contribution of ITK and several other organizations, held from March 13 to 14, 2006 at the Government Conference Center in Ottawa. It was incredibly intense: conferences, workshops, presentations, brainstorming... Those 2 days seemed like a whole working week! Anyway... we met interesting people of all over Canada. Before I left, I popped in at ITK and made a presentation of our new input method for syllabics. Still confidential. All I can write is that the prototype passed the feasibility evaluation. Stay tuned to Linguasoft.

Journalism Workshop for Aboriginal Youth

We had a new job to do for our beloved client Projets Autochtones du Québec - aka PAQ - or, if you read English ;) "Aboriginal Projects of Quebec". For several months, they gave a workshop to train young persons on journalism. Thanks to the coordination and dedication of PAQ's team, and thanks to the great interest and energy that the Youth put into this project, the result demonstrate how successful this initiative has been: a collection of outstanding articles on topics as diverse as culture, language and technology.
The photo is copyright Projets Autochtones du Québec.

Avataq selects Linguasoft to develop a CDROM/DVD

We're really proud to collaborate with Avataq team on this project. We'll be in charge of - guess what - technology. Goal is to create a multimedia product based on a story told by Mary Pootoogee, an Inuk Elder. It tells a lot about the harshness of life that the Inuit people had to cope with no so long ago. Avataq wants to get the message across to the Youth that their ancestors had to face huge difficulties, death, starvation, and still, they made it with courage and persistence. We'll put our hearts and guts into this project. Beyond the sheer technological dimension of our job, we'll also work on all the human, emotional, artistic, social and societal facets of this great project. Understand why I said we're proud to be part of it?

Projets Autochtones du Québec selects Linguasoft's hosting solution (LinguaMail & LinguaWeb)

As many non-profit organizations, part of their job is to search and find cost-efficient solutions. Linguasoft is committed to contributing to the community of technology users, and the fact that NPO's are sometimes short on budget does NOT mean we're not going to help them. It is in conformity with this vision that we offered free/no-catch/no-sneaky-clause/purely-friendly hosting to Projets Autochtones. We're proud to host both their Web site and email accounts.
The logo is copyright Projets Autochtones du Québec.

Visiting the Peoples of Lake Titicaca (Peru)

After a stay of 2 days in Puno, we took the boat and visited the Uros. This people has been living on islands they make themselves with reed. They actually use reed for many things: boats, houses, furniture, and food (we tried it! Taste is not strong, but there's lots of great nutriments inside). Given that their tradition has been going on for several millenia, no doubt it's a healthy life. Their islands can be moved around at will, anchored, bound to other islands...

Then we moved on to Amantani Island. We were hosted by a family of Natives. They are very humble persons, very nice, and, believe me, hard-working. Photo show a typical meal. There's no electricity on the island, so we ate at the light of candles. That was a memorable dinner.

Next island we visited was Taquile. Though it's only a two-hour trip from Amantani, the culture is very different. The economy is based on cooperatives, which defines all the methods and processes of work, prices of handcraft articles, etc. Clothing tradition seems to be stricter here.