Coding for Language Communities (Summer school, Minde /Portugal)

[Vera Ferreira]

Please pass on to interested parties.*

CID**LeS Summer School: **CODING FOR LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES (CLC 2014)*

*Date and venue**:* August 11th - 15th | The Summer School will take 
place within the "Parque Natural das Serras de Aire e Candeeiros" in or 
near Minde, Portugal.

*Website:* 
http://www.cidles.eu/summer-school-coding-for-language-communities-2014/

*About the Summer School*
There are currently around 7.000 languages spoken all over the world - 
but each month a language dies. In general we see a strong tendency to 
learn and use only the major languages such as English, German, French, 
etc., especially in electronic communication. This is partly caused by 
the lack of hardware (e.g. keyboards) and software (for transliteration, 
text completion, etc.) for under-resourced languages, which constrain 
the natural usage of people's own language in many tasks. The Summer 
School "Coding for Language Communities" is about ongoing research and 
development to turn that process in exactly the other direction: every 
successful technology can also be used to teach, revitalize and 
therefore boost the use of regional languages. This technology should 
also assist the renewal of local languages and cultures by allowing 
people to actively teach, learn, extend, and spread their language in 
their community. Our aim is to give people the ability to use their 
mother tongue in everyday electronic communication, no matter where they 
are or what language they speak.

What will we do?
The Summer School "Coding for Language Communites" aims to bring 
together three groups:

- Speakers of languages that are currently not supported by language 
technologies and that want to use their language on electronic devices;

- Students of linguistics and language-related disciplines interested in 
learning about software development;

- Software developers and students of computational sciences that are 
interested in supporting under-resourced languages by technological means.

During an exciting and exhausting week we will work together to develop 
new software and tools for under-resourced languages. We will create 
five interdisciplinary teams to tackle real-world problems in ongoing or 
new open source projects. Each team will consist of five members, with 
at least one participant of each of the groups mentioned above. Each 
team will have an expert as mentor to guide and supervise the progress, 
in addition to three senior software developers that will be available 
to support all the teams in the implementation of the solution. At the 
end of the week there will be prizes for the most creative solutions. 
Each day we start with a theoretical talk by one of the mentors, which 
complements the practical experience of developing language technologies 
as a team within an open source project.

This summer school is the first part of a larger event. There will be a 
second summer school the week after this one about Community-driven 
Language Documentation 
(http://www.cidles.eu/summer-school-community-driven-language-documentation-2014/).

*Mentors*
Kevin Scannell
Bruce Birch
Dorothee Beermann
Peter Bouda
other mentors to be announced

*Application*
Deadline for application is *May 31st, 2014*.  The number of 
participants is limited to 25. Admission will be based on the track 
record and a motivational statement that is part of the application form.

Apply here: 
http://www.cidles.eu/summer-school-community-driven-language-documentation-2014/apply/

*Costs*
The summer school costs 250 Euros for the whole week. The fee includes 
summer school materials, all meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and a 
place to sleep.

We plan to provide scholarships for students to participate in the 
summer school. If possible, the scholarship will cover the fee of 250 
Euros and travel costs up to 1.000 Euros. Describe in the application 
form why you need a scholarship.

*Organizing team*
Vera Ferreira
Peter Bouda
Rita Pedro
Felix Rau
Kevin Scannell
Dorothee Beermann
Eva Schinzel

For more information please contact clc2014 at cidles.eu.

-- 
Vera Ferreira
Centro Interdisciplinar de Documentação Linguística e Social / Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation
Rua do Remexido, Loja 15
2395-174 Minde
Portugal

Tel.: +351249849123
Email:vferreira at cidles.eu
Web:http://www.cidles.eu

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