http://donosborn.org/blog ... on agriculture, NRM, education, ICT, language & development Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:43:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The April-May issue of Multilingual, which I'm just catching up with, features seven articles on machine translation (MT). Having a long term interest in this area (which is not to say any expertise) and in its potential for less-widely spoken languages, and having broached the topic on this blog once ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/06/30/paradigm-shift-on-machine-translation/ A quick personal note about the major earthquake in Sichuan, China. The epicenter was just west of Chengdu - city where my wife and son are - but they are fine, as is her extended family there, and the building. I actually was in Bamako, Mali when it happened and heard ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/05/19/distant-rumblings/ I had the opportunity yesterday (April 29) to visit the National Museum of Language (NML) in College Park, Maryland (U.S.) by invitation for a special preview day. The museum opens to the public formally on Saturday, May 3. The name gives the impression that it is government-owned, like the various other ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/04/30/national-museum-of-language/ The World of Soy, a new volume of articles about the uses of soybeans in various parts of the world, is nearing publication. It is edited by Christine M. Du Bois, Chee-Beng Tan, and Sidney Mintz, and the publisher is the University of Illinois Press (UIP). This is the ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/04/20/the-world-of-soy-publication/ On the Wikinomics blog, Dan Herman responded to my discussion of use of the long tail model for languages. He raised some interesting points that I'll come to in a moment. Part of the reason I posted on the long-tail concept is that I believe it will be useful in various ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/04/17/economics-of-language-and-the-%e2%80%9clong-tail%e2%80%9d-effect-part-2/ "The economics of language has been neglected and deserves much greater attention," wrote economist Donald Lamberton in a book he edited in 2002. That may not have been too much of a revelation at the time - only a few years earlier (1994) another economist, François Grin, wrote that this ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/04/10/economics-of-language-the-long-tail-effect/ There are probably not many people who have heard of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (UDLR). The whole concept of linguistic rights is not widely known or discussed outside of some "MINEL" (minority, indigenous, national, endangered, local) language communities and language experts and activists. During this International Year ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/03/31/what-about-the-declaration-of-linguistic-rights/ Lost Crops of Africa: ... Read this FREE online!Full Book The third and final volume of the Lost Crops of Africa series was recently published by the National Academies Press. Its topic is Fruits. I just received a copy, as well as a one of the second volume on Vegetables, ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/03/07/lost-crops-of-africa/ The recipient of the Linguapax Prize for 2008 is Dr. Neville Alexander of South Africa. The prize is awarded annually (since 2000) in recognition of contributions to linguistic diversity and multilingual education. Although the Linguapax site does not at this writing have updated information, the website of the UNESCO Centre of ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/03/01/2008-linguapax-prize-winner-neville-alexander/ Anyone can declare a year of something and several conservation organizations have combined to declare 2008 the Year of the Frog. They're calling attention to the importance of amphibians (apparently about half the species in the world are threatened or endangered), and to an "Amphibian Conservation Action Plan" of which ... http://donosborn.org/blog/2008/02/29/2008-year-of-the-frog/