[An-lang] Ethnologue Global Collaboration jc

Tue Jun 2 09:15:16 UTC 2015

The email below was originally written for Linguistic Society of PNG members, but John Carter welcomes spreading the information widely. If you are interested and able to assist, please follow-up on the contacts below (not to me!). And feel free to pass on this information.

Regards,

Don

Don Niles, PhD

Acting Director & Senior Ethnomusicologist

Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies

Box 1432

Boroko 111

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Vice President

International Council for Traditional Music

tel.: +675 325-4644

fax: +675 325-0531

email: dniles.ipngs at gmail.com

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:20 AM, LR-Sociolinguistics <L <mailto:L%09R-Socioling at sil.org.pg>    R-Socioling at sil.org.pg> wrote:

Hello LSPNG,

I’m passing along a request from Ethnologue to contribute in a new way to Ethnologue. Ethnologue is the most comprehensive source of its kind, but it is only as good as the data contributed. Ethnologue is recruiting people to be Field Contributors who will oversee a portfolio of languages and actively pursue updated or missing information. I believe there are people who’ve attended LSPNG who may be interested in contributing to the Ethnologue in this way, but I need your help in getting the information to them. Could you tell me who you’d recommend I contact?

In the past Ethnologue has checked its data by sending around a huge file, asking SIL translators, etc to make corrections. This approach wasn’t very effective. Field Contributors are people who are interested in seeing Ethnologue match what they already know or have the capacity to learn about PNG’s languages. Ideally they are people who have some knowledge of an area or a group of languages.

Interested? See below and attached for a full description of Ethnologue’s request. Training will be offered in Brisbane 25-27 August (costs covered), so your prompt response is desired. Please write Editor_Ethnologue at sil.org and copy us here at the SIL PNG survey office lr-socioling at sil.org.pg. 

John Carter

Language Assessment Team Leader

Pacific Area Language Assessment Advisor

Phone: (675) 537-4473 Skype: johnc.surveyor                                                                            

From: Gary Simons
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2015 6:46 AM
Subject: Ethnologue Global Collaboration

The time has come around again to review information for the next edition of Ethnologue, which will be the 19th edition due out next February [2016].  With past editions we have sent all the existing information to John Brownie and the survey office in a huge Word file and they have found ways to get it reviewed.  This time around we are launching a new approach, namely, training and deputizing a group of Field Contributors who will monitor the situation for a portfolio of languages and log into our database to make updates through a web interface as information becomes available.   Agreeing to be a Field Contributor is not like taking on a new part-time assignment.  Rather it is more like adding something to an existing PRD, such that contributors are responsible to report new information they learn as they are carrying out their role in the entity. […]

We have funding […] for a project called Ethnologue Global Collaboration that will allow us to put on the training for Field Contributors.  The first attachment below gives an executive summary of the project. The second attachment gives a run-down of what the role of Field Contributor will entail.   

In the new system, each Field Contributor will have a portfolio of languages that they agree to monitor.  In round numbers, we are thinking about 100 languages per portfolio.  In the PNG setting, it probably makes sense to align the portfolios with the regions that RDs oversee.  Thus we are hoping that each RD would be able to name one or two people who would take on the responsibility to monitor languages in the region.  The person who is already entering data for the LSP system might be an ideal candidate, since the online system we have built is very similar to the LSP system.  […]

Do we have any SIL staff who are particularly good at following what is going on with languages in particular parts of the country?  And we need not limit ourselves to SIL members.  Do we know people from partner organizations who would be good at this?  Or can you think of any university colleagues who might like to collaborate with SIL in this way?

So our basic question is how do we move forward with lining up enough Field Contributors to cover the language situation in PNG?  Note that we need not be limited to SIL staff; we can grant login privilege for this system to people from partner organizations.  So we would like to know about people from other organizations who are good at monitoring the language situation. I look forward to hearing your response.  Our funding will cover all the expenses of the training event and we are hoping to pull something together for late July or sometime in September [scheduled for 25-27 August in Brisbane].

Blessings,

-Gary

_______________

Gary Simons

Executive Editor, Ethnologue and

Chief Research Officer, SIL International

http://www.sil.org/~simonsg/

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