Native language goes online (fwd)

[Keola Donaghy]

Indigenous Languages and Technology <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU> writes:
>please, feel free to discuss your project with us here on ILAT!  ;-)

OK, I'll be as brief as I can for now ;-)

First, I should say that most of the credit for pulling Ulukau together
goes to Robert Stauffer at Alu Like, Inc. It was his efforts that led to
so many organization participating and offering to add content to the
library, in addition to coordinating efforts with our colleague in
Aotearoa (New Zealand) who handles the Greenstone software engine that
drives the library and us here at UH-Hilo. The server is maintained here
at my office.

There are several components to the library, with more to be added soon.
The most popular site currently is the dictionary side, which includes
both the Puku'i/Elbert Hawaiian dictionary (the standard dictionary we all
use, but which has not been revised in many years) as well as the Mamaka
Kaiao new lexicon dictionary maintained by our office, Hale Kuamo'o at
UH-Hilo and the 'Aha Punana Leo, Inc. More dictionaries, including
historic ones, can and will be added at a later date. The dictionaries can
be search simultaneously, separately, and many variations of spelling are
allowable (with or without diacritics and derivative spellings). A Flash
search interface allows users without a Hawaiian keyboard or fonts to
search the diacritic characters. This interface is also available in the
other sections of Ulukau.

The Newspaper section of the site is just a start of what is probably the
most ambitious part of the library. There are an estimated 125,000 pages
of archival newspapers in the Hawaiian language, from the mid-1800s
through the 1900s. They are being digitized, OCR'd and made text
searchable on Ulukau. Severall resolutions of .pdfs are also made
available so that once a passage is located by text search, the image of
the original page can been viewed or printed. Previously these were only
available by microfilm at libraries, and a small number available as GIF
files (but no text search capability) at a UH-Manoa site. Completion of
this project will take years, but papers added incrementally as they get
converted.

Ka Ho'oilina is a Hawaiian academic journal. In printed form it has 4
colums - source orthography (no diacritics), modernized text, English
translation, and then any notes regarding the text. The source of the
journals is newspapers, government documents and other archival materials.
Three issues have been printed, the fourth being worked on now. The first
two issues are online now. We will have recorded audio of all of them
(currently only issue 1 is ready), that that people can hear the text
being spoken. These can be downloaded or streamed as MP3s.

The books section is in the earliest stage. The model for this section is
the Kekuhaupi'o text, which is currently the only one on line. Our office
published the original Hawaiian version of this several years ago, it will
go up soon. We have commitments from many publishers to include their
books on this site. The one currently online is a transation of the
original Hawaiian text, and was published by Kamehameha Schools Press.
There are hundreds available to us and it's just a matter of time and
money to get them on Ulukau.

The Hawaiian Bible, or Bibles, I should say, is another partnership
project. they have scanned many images of historic Bibles, made them
available on Ulukai, and they are being OCR'd as well to make them text
searchable. They are currently verse searchable, and you will see the
images of those verse in Hawaiian.

There will be a section for academic papers writtten in Hawaiian as well.
My MA thesis, a linguistsic analysis of the songs and recorded performance
of John Kameaaloha Almeida, will go online soon. It will include recorded
examples of song passages that are scrutinized in the text, something that
obviously can be done in paper format. Other papers will follow shortly
thereafter.

If there are any quesitons regarding any of this, or regarding the
technical aspects of the server, please let me know. If it is beyond my
knowledge, I'll forward them to our colleague in Aotearoa. He has done
significant customization work to Greenstone to accomodate our needs, and
some of these will likely find its way into future Greenstone releases.

Aloha,

Keola


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Keola Donaghy
Hawaiian Language Curriculum and Technology Coordinator
Native Hawaiian Serving Institution Program
University of Hawai'i at Hilo

keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu        http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~nhsi
Kualono                           http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/
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