Rosetta Stone Endangered Language Program Releases Navajo Language Software (fwd link)

[Mary Hermes]

I did look into this, before the endangered language initiative, this is what they charged and how it played out:

Level one was a bit over $100,000, for level two something like $225,000 (this is the level they recommend going to) and level three another $100,000. You provide the content, they develop it into the product, you get 1,000 copies of the CD/DVD. I believe the group that does this gets to keep the IP on all of this, and you can always buy more of the CDs/DVDs for a price, don't remember if it was specified. 
I will attach the cost estimates.
A few years ago they offered "endangered language" competition, and then must have had a grant and did it for much less.
This is the first finished product I have heard of. They had five tribes or so they granted, not sure about this.

In an effort to be transparent and disclose....
We made a similar product Ojibwemodaa!  Through Transparent Languages (Claire you may know them, they are based in Nashua NH)
We are independent, Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia, non-profit. As an indigenous non-profit, our version is done for much less than estimates I am sending. Of course, we do not have any marketing budget, so we are completely unknown!
We are just starting to work for other tribes, starting with the Menominee -- and doing a bare bones run for just 2-3 minuet immersion movies in the software.  We'll have a good cost estimate when we finish something for them.

Mii sa i'iw minik
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Mary Hermes, PhD
Associate Professor of Education
Eni-gikendaasoyang:  Center for Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization
University of Minnesota Duluth
715-462-4230



On Aug 25, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Phillip E Cash Cash wrote:

> Interesting arrangement certainly.  Thnx Claire, Phil
> 
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Claire Bowern <clairebowern at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Phil,
> As I understand it, Rosetta is doing this for free as long as there is
> a community commitment to providing the source materials (and they
> need to demonstrate they can do so). Rosetta provides a certain amount
> of recording and editing time, the prompts, and the software, and
> funds the travel for the sound engineers to visit the community.
> This is a total guess but I would guess that would run to $50,000
> easily, probably more, since it would be billed at professional hourly
> rates, not academic linguist rates.
> Claire
> 
> --
> 
> -----
> Claire Bowern
> Associate Professor
> Department of Linguistics
> Yale University
> 370 Temple St
> New Haven, CT 06511
> North American Dialects survey:
> http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/
>