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Contributing € 5
Créditos
Mención en la página de agradecimiento del Diccionario Tseltal en línea
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About this project
An Online Dictionary for Tseltal (Mayan) Language
Show list of needs
Task
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Minimum | Optimum |
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Programación básica en php para el diccionario electrónico y alojamiento en línea
Pago para la elaboración del programa en php que permitirá convertir la base de datos del diccionario (que está en formato de texto) en un diccionario electrónico publicable en línea, incluyendo el desarrollo de un buscador básico y el alojamiento web. Contamos con el apoyo de un programador solidario dispuesto a realizar esto a un costo muy accesible.
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€ 1.200 | |
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Dos becas de cinco meses de medio tiempo para la adecuación del diccionario
Dos becarios o becarias tseltales, tentativamente estudiantes a nivel licenciatura, apoyarán durante cinco meses en la conversión del texto del diccionario a una base de datos consistente lista para ser procesada a nivel computacional. Se trata de un trabajo considerable, que incluye lo siguiente:
- Revisión de la estructura de las entradas para eliminar inconsistencias y posibilitar su procesamiento informático.
- Desarrollar la conectividad entre entradas por medio de hipervínculos para posibilitar la navegación automática.
- Llevar a cabo una revisión general de los datos en tseltal (lemas, definiciones, ejemplos, etc.)
El monto de la beca se calculó en base a los estándares actuales en instituciones mexicanas (4 mil pesos mensuales para nivel licenciatura). Se pensó en becas de medio tiempo para darles posibilidades de participar a jóvenes que están estudiando al mismo tiempo.
Los dos becarios o becarias recibirán una formación en escritura del tseltal y en lexicografía (elaboración de diccionarios)
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€ 2.000 | |
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Comisiones
Comisiones en concepto de prestación de servicios por parte de Goteo y por transacciones económicas, derivadas de los métodos de pago
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€ 250 | |
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Programación avanzada para el diccionario
El desarrollo de funciones avanzadas para el diccionario requiere trabajo adicional por parte del programador. La programación avanzada contempla lo siguiente:
- Un buscador inteligente, capaz de ayudar a los usuarios sugiriendo ortografías alternativas e interpretando variaciones dialectales
- Una opción de descarga en dispositivos móviles.
- El componente interactivo del proyecto: foro de discusión, blog de comentarios para cada entrada, posibilidad de realizar cambios y subir archivos de audio.
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€ 1.000 | |
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Grabación de audios de las palabras y ejemplos del diccionario
Se necesita grabar una por una las 7081 palabras actualmente en el diccionario, más los 13000 ejemplos ilustrativos que las acompañan. Para obtener estos audios, se necesita al menos unas 150 horas de trabajo en sesiones de grabación con colaboradores hablantes de la lengua (calculando que se pueden grabar en promedio poco más de dos audios por minuto). Estos colaboradores requieren un pago por su tiempo, que se estima en 5 euros por hora. Estas grabaciones se realizarán en los diferentes lugares de residencia de los hablantes (el diccionario contiene datos de 17 localidades diferentes, ubicadas a diferentes distancias de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, donde está basado el proyecto, entre una hora y siete horas de carro), implicando gastos de transporte y alimentación. Se estima que serán necesarios unos 35 viajes de una persona, durante 6 meses, con un promedio de 15 euros de gastos de transporte ida y vuelta por viaje y 5 euros de alimentos.
- 750 euros: pago por tiempo de colaboradores (150 horas x 5 euros)
- 525 euros: gastos de transporte para la persona que realizará las grabaciones (35 viajes x 15 euros)
- 175 euros: gastos de alimentación para la persona que realizará las grabaciones (35 viajes x 5 euros)
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€ 1.450 | |
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Beca para la grabación de audios
Un becario o becaria de tiempo completo apoyará durante 6 meses las tareas de grabación de audios para el diccionario, con las siguientes tareas:
- Sesiones de grabación de audios en los diferentes pueblos tseltales.
- Selección y edición de los audios.
- Incorporación de los audios a la base de datos del diccionario.
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€ 2.400 | |
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Envío de recompensas
Envío de ejemplares impresos del Diccionario Multidialectal del Tseltal a los donadores acreedores de esta recompensa (estimando 5 envíos en México a 15 euros cada uno y 5 envíos fuera de México a 50 euros cada uno)
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€ 325 | |
| Total | € 3.450 | € 8.625 |
Necessary
Supplemental
General information
UNESCO has proclaimed 2019 the "International Year of Indigenous Languages" in order to raise awareness about the accelerating disappearance of indigenous languages, together with the knowledge they convey and the cultures they embody. This project seeks to strengthen one of these threatened languages, Tseltal, through the development of a free access online dictionary.
Tseltal is a Mayan language spoken in southeastern Mexico, in the state of Chiapas. It has about 500 thousand speakers, which seems like a lot compared to other Amerindian languages. However, like all indigenous languages, Tseltal is now facing serious threats, which include; the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life in the context of global capitalism and the migration this generates; linguistic and cultural discrimination by the dominant culture; the linguistic invasion of Spanish by the mass media. In this context, many Tseltal parents now choose to stop transmitting their mother tongue to their children, favoring Spanish instead. With this rupture in transmission, the breaking point that usually leads to the disappearance of a language is currently taking place.
However, concrete actions can be taken to reverse this process of loss, especially as many Tseltal speakers are willing to mobilize for their language and culture and demand a more inclusive world with diverse ways of thinking, living and talking.
A dictionary can help strengthen a language: it gives it visibility in society, provides a tool for teaching it to children and adults, and helps to spread words and meanings. In addition, especially for a language like Tseltal that presents has dialectal differences from one village to another, a dictionary can help speakers themselves become aware of these variations, which amounts to seeing this internal diversity as a wealth instead of an obstacle.
This was the purpose of the Tseltal Multidialectal Dictionary, coordinated by Gilles Polian and edited by INALI and CIESAS, which was published as a book in 2018. With more than 7000 entries and a large amount of information, this dictionary is the most important publication to date on Tseltal. It is currently being distributed in Tseltal communities. However, its impact will be limited for several reasons: its print run was small (1000 copies) because there is little institutional support for indigenous languages, and its price (350 pesos / 18 US dollars) makes it expensive for many speakers. Chiapas is among Mexico's poorest regions, and poverty is even greater in areas where Mayan languages are spoken.
Currently, however, people in indigenous communities are increasingly using mobile phones with Internet access. This opens the possibility of distributing this material as an electronic dictionary that can be consulted online and downloaded for free on mobile devices. This is the goal of this project: now that there is a Tseltal multidialectal dictionary, with additional resources it could be converted into an online dictionary that would be useful to Tseltal speakers and all who are interested in the language. This virtual space could serve as a permanent and participative forum to promote the language, share reflections and enrich the dictionary collectively.
Main features and goals of the crowdfunding campaign
An online electronic dictionary is much more than a simple paper dictionary and also much more than a simple searchable pdf. People who have used online dictionaries such as wordreference.com know the potential of these tools, which not only facilitate searches, but also have discussion forums on translation issues and allow multimedia content. As of now, such tools do not exist for Amerindian languages, since developing dictionaries involves a lot of work, money and time. However, the potential usefulness for these languages is enormous. In the case of the Tseltal dictionary, the following benefits are foreseen:
- An intelligent search engine will help the user in their searches, suggesting alternative spellings and linking words of different dialectal variants. This is very important for languages such as Tseltal that do not have a unique or "standard" way of speaking, let alone of writing, and which also have significant internal diversity.
- Existing information (printed dictionary text) will be supplemented by multimedia content: audio recordings of words and examples, photos and even short videos.
- The dictionary will automatically adapt to the format of the type of device from which it will be consulted, for example for mobile phones.
- It will also be possible to download the dictionary as a smartphone app, for off-line use.
- It will be an interactive and participative dictionary: users will be able to add comments, words and definitions, and even record their own pronunciation, and upload sound files on the site.
- The dictionary will be constantly updated, partly powered by the users themselves and partly by the team of the Tseltal Documentation Center.
Finally,this project will likely arouse much interest and can serve as a model for other documenters of other Amerindian languages. We are committed to openly sharing both the experience and the programming code for other non-profit projects.
Why this is important
There is a great need for didactic materials for Indigenous languages. Much of the work of linguists is reduced to the scientific work of analyzing languages and their reality, which is certainly important, but does not go beyond the very closed circles of the academic world. This is not the case for this project, which is aimed at the following people:
- Speakers of Tseltal and other Mayan languages, especially young people, who master technology and are increasingly aware of the necessary struggle to maintain their language and culture.
- All people interested in the Tseltal language and culture, in particular people, in Mexico and elsewhere, who want to learn it.
- People who speak native languages of the Americas in general.
- All people who value the cultural and linguistic diversity of humanity.
I am a linguis and a professor in a Mexican research institution, CIESAS (Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology), as part of a linguistics teaching program specializing in the Amerindian languages. Since 2006, I have coordinated the Tseltal Documentation Center, which has created an audiovisual and written record, or library, of the Tseltal language and culture, at the service of its dissemination and conservation. There is now a collection of more than 500 hours of videos showing a wide variety of interactions in Tseltal, from interviews to prayers and spontaneous conversations in various areas (family, public, work, etc.). All these interactions have been transcribed and translated into Spanish, forming a large database of texts of great use that is available to the general public (it can be found on the following pages: https://ailla.utexas.org / and https://elar.soas.ac.uk/, search there for collections registered under the name of Gilles Polian).
This Center's primary goal is to train young Tseltal men and women to become documenters of their own language. In these 13 years, some 40 native Tseltal speakers have collaborated as members of the documentation team or as fellows. Currently, the team is made up of four documenters (see https://tseltaltokal.org/colaboradores/).
As a documentation center, we already have experience in the development of online materials, in particular through the Tseltal Linguistic Atlas (ALiSTO), a project closely related to the online dictionary, but different in its approach and objectives (an atlas presents a small set of data on the geographical variation of a language; it is not a systematic record of all words as a dictionary). The great interest aroused by ALiSTO has been part of the motivation to promote this new dictionary project.
This project will benefit from the experience, infrastructure and institutional backing of the Tseltal Documentation Center and of CIESAS. This includes, amongst other things, being able to count on recording equipment (video cameras, digital voice recorders), computers, hard drives and an office with Internet.
Social commitment
Educational
Defend the cultural diversity of humanity, in particular the diversity of languages as collective treasures of peoples.