On December 16, 2019, PanLex director David Kamholz spoke at the San Francisco Center for the Book on PanLex and the Internet Archive’s joint project to digitize Balinese palm-leaf manuscripts. You can view a recording of the presentation below, and slides are available here. The presentation introduces Balinese manuscripts, covers technical challenges in supporting Balinese […]
In 2019, Translations Commons published “Indigenous Languages: Zero to Digital”, a guide to creating digital infrastructure for indigenous communities. Using flowcharts and clear instructions, it explains how to create every level of the technology stack required to make a language usable online. This easy-to-understand and ground-breaking resource was co-authored with several partners in language and […]
Words for animals often have interesting histories. Some, like English mouse, have remained almost unchanged for centuries (millennia, if you go back to Indo-European). Others, like English dog, can be tracked only so far before the trail runs dry. The word for bear was altered in many Indo-European languages through a process called taboo deformation. […]