Heritage: Multilinguae LCTL congress in Spain, November 2000

[Scott McGinnis]

Heritage Languages Listserve
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Multilinguae congress.
A way to promote the use of ITs, Multimedia and
language industries in lesser used languages.

San Sebastian, Spain
8-9 November 2000

Papers and/or workshops (of up to 30-45 minutes duration) from
academics, software and multimedia developers and distributors,
experts in the digital distribution channel and information
organisations (including libraries, government, and the private
sector) are sought for presentation at the congress. All papers &
presentations should be designed for non-specialist audiences, and
connect theory and practice.

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be sent to me directly
(garatea at gaia.es) for consideration by the committee, before end of
march (31st of March).

BACKGROUND

Within the European Union, there are more than 40 autochthonous
languages in everyday use. Of these, only 11 are official languages of
the Union: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. In addition, Irish is a
"treaty language".

Of Europe's 370 million citizens, nearly 50 million speak a language
other than the official language of the State in which they
live. These other languages are an integral part of our cultural
heritage. They include some of the oldest languages in the Western
world, and most of them have rich cultural, literary and folk
traditions.

Technology is simply one of the tools with which we involve as
community members in learning and using minority languages in our
daily lives. It is also a link with the culture that surrounds most of
us today and which is so attractive to the younger generations. What
we would like to present, briefly in this Congress is that new
technologies have, among others, the potential to:

* Document and promote culture and minority speech
* Help to revitalise language
* Promote the status of the language as a viable medium of communication
 expand and strengthen minority language communities by creating an
 audience and purpose for writing in minority languages
* Make Minority language resources available beyond educational
 institutions.
* Expedite production and distribution of relevant, quality Minority
 language materials and resources.
* Provide opportunities to create multimedia projects
* Excite learners to become motivated, engaged in the learning process
 and producers in the target language.
* Aspects of multi-modal capability include integrated text, sound, and
 graphics which are suitable for a range of learner types
* Increase student-student communication and collaboration
* Enhance and expand instructional strategies
* Build upon/enhance existing and effective pedagogy
* Promote literacy skills
* Promote computer literacy. Computers add to the study of minority
 language, and computer skills that are learned transfer to other
courses
 and aspects of students' lives.

For all the above mentioned we must have a clear idea of the following
statements:
* The market is there. 50 million of potential European users/buyers, as
 minority speakers.
* The industry is there but a bit dispersed and not very well known.

OBJECTIVES
The organisation of the Multilinguae International Congress, which is
organised by GAIA, the Telecommunications Cluster of the Basque Country
and will be co-financed by the European Commission (DG XXII), intends,
on the one side, to facilitate contacts between small and medium
European companies, technologists, content providers,  and researchers
belonging to the Multimedia and Software sector working for Minority or
endangered languages (if we are talking about IT, apart from English
almost all languages of the world), and, on the other side, to provoke
the utilisation of this Multimedia tools by the education,
administration bodies and end users coming from minority communities.
The general objective of the MULTILINGUAE congress is to develop
channels, links and activities between institutions representing similar
collectives in different cultural and geographical areas where minority
languages are spoken for interchange of experiences, best practices and
for the realisation of joint actions with a view to promoting Multimedia
Development and the Linguistic Diversity of the EU. All this, providing:
competitive expansion of the companies of the sector, the development of
new business activities, promotion of employment and innovation in the
creation of support infrastructures for the European Linguistic
Diversity and for technological and socio-economic development, by
giving incentives to investment in research, training and inter-regional
and inter-company co-operation.

Why organise the Multilinguae international congress?
It will take more than conferences to keep most European Minority
Languages from becoming extinct. If all it took was conferences, then
the minority languages would not be in the sad condition that most of
them are in now because many of them have been exposed to conferences
before. If not conferences, what then? Lots of different approaches have
been tried. These are not startling innovations; what we need is a
critical mass of committed people, and this critical mass can only be
created through continuous capillary infiltration of information and
encouragement. This conference is intended to be a part of such an
effort. It will be disseminated not only to those who attended of the
sessions, but to a much wider audience consisting of Minority and
non-Minority individuals and institutions because of its needed market
oriented approach.

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Jokin Garatea                         GAIA
International Department              C\ Camino Portuetxe, 14
Email: garatea at gaia.es                Edificio Ibaeta 1
                                      20018, San Sebastian
                                      Spain
                                      Tel. +34 943 31 66 66
                                      Fax. +34 943 31 10 66
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