2014-04-11

Barents Language Archive and Project-Internal Workflows

Participants:

  • Marina
  • Vasili
  • Michael
  • Niko
  • Alexandra

Place:

  • Göttingen (during IFUSCO)

Time:

  • 11 April 2014, 18-20pm

Topics:

  • Founding of a spoken language archive in Syktyvkar
  • Workflows for text annotation

Barents Language Archive

  • Paul Trilsbeek from TLA provided technical specifications for the server and agreed to help us setting it up with their software, but they do not have ressources to support us officially like their other "Regional Archives"
  • Marina finds money to buy the server and discusses technical details with Andrej in Syktavkar
  • Marina, Andrej and Michael discuss the necessary manual translation and localization of the TLA tools (for data up/download as well as for metadata browsing/editing) in Russian; ideally this is done until Fall 2014
  • Server setup in Syktyvkar takes place in Fall/Winter 2014, once the major system update and the switch to CMDI metadata is introduced at TLA
  • Michael plans to be present in Syktyvkar for about one week in Fall/Winter 2014 to help setting up the server and presenting it to the public
  • Our future plans for the server are to link it to the LAT international network of language archives and open it to be used by other researchers and language communities; the Kola Sámi Documentation Project will also copy its archive there

Further discussion for ELAN-annotation workflows and conventions:

  • Vasili and Marina worked with the first test files (together with Niko) already, but the use of Git-Hub needs to be trained more
  • Orthography: as close to standard written Komi as possible
  • Conventions for spoken language (hesitations, false starts, punctuation, etc.): as close to standard written language
  • Michael writes a document on the Project Wiki listing simple conventions
  • We will discuss orthography and other conventions further with concrete examples, once they occur

Open questions from last meeting (not taken up yet):

  • How can we make use of the Komi hunspell while transcribing? (ELAN has no spellchecking built in.)

Next meeting:

  • monthly Skype meetings of all team members, starting in early May