[7 July 2006] The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing has set up an international working group with the aim of creating a UNESCO chair in linguistic technologies in the service of education in under-supported minority languages (without lexical and grammatical resources). The specific objective is to start up a pilot project using linguistic technologies to give indigenous child populations access to educational contents in their mother tongue (TECLIN).
As the project’s baseline document explains, “contents refer to the core contents defined for all the pilot communities (communities that speak the languages selected as mother tongues), where the systems are to be deployed initially”. The chosen languages for this pilot project are Nauathl, which is spoken by 1,200,000 people in central Mexico, and Quechua, the fifth most widespread family of languages in the world and the fourth most commonly spoken language in America.
Technology to narrow the digital breach
The project goals are to conserve the world linguistic heritage, guarantee speakers of under-supported languages limitless access to universal contents, and demonstrate that technology can narrow the digital breach caused by linguistic diversity. The project should work towards the objectives of the Valparaíso Declaration (signed by Iber-American Education Ministers in July 2007), which set out to eradicate primary and functional illiteracy in Iber-America by the year 2015. There are 40 million illiterate people in the Andrés Bello Convention member countries, formed by 11 Latin American countries and Spain.
The first international project working meeting was held at the School of Computing throughout the week beginning June 16th. It was attended by representatives from Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil, apart from Spain. The project coordinator is Jesús Cardeñosa, professor of the School of Computing. The outcome of the meeting was a commitment in writing to set up an international consortium, as well as a UNESCO chair project, including contents, methodology and schedule. It is planned to submit the chair project to UNESCO in 2009 for approval. The contents would be developed over a period of three years.
UNESCO Chairs programme
The UNESCO Chairs programme was approved by the UNESCO General Conference in 1991. The primary objectives of this programme were: encourage inter-university cooperation and transfer of knowledge, help to build and strengthen university networks, set up specialized and advanced research institutions with Chairs as focal points, and counteract talent flight in the respective countries.
There are now a total of 14 UNESCO chairs in the Madrid Region, three of which are based at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The Chair of linguistic technologies in the service of education in indigenous populations would be the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s fourth and the region’s 15th chair. This chair conforms to the objectives of the UNESCO chairs programme and is part of the UNESCO’s effort (Babel Programme) to conserve and support local languages and cultures, of which languages are a major intangible heritage.
The TECLIN work team members are experts in pedagogy, educational innovation, linguists, language technologists and systems engineers. They will be responsible for designing and developing special-purpose software, design and web applications components.
