Cleaning, Organizing, and Uniting Linguistic Databases (the CLOUD Project)

在目前世界上使用的大约7000种语言中，语言学家估计近一半将在下个世纪内灭绝。这些语言中很少有文献记载，但在过去的二十年里，研究人员一直在与各种濒危语言的使用者合作，以保存这些语言所拥有的丰富数据。这些数据对于语言教育工作和世界语言多样性的语言研究来说是无价的。然而，不幸的是，这些数据大多保存在这些研究人员的个人文件中，其他对语言感兴趣的人无法访问，而且数据的形式也不便于共享。加拿大大学（康考迪亚大学和麦吉尔大学）和哈佛大学合作的can项目（清理、组织和统一语言数据库）为这个问题提供了解决方案。该项目的主要目标是为语言数据创建一种新的通用数据格式，为这些数据创建集中的在线存储，以及一套相关的在线工具，使世界各地的用户能够更轻松、更准确地收集、保存和共享语言数据。该项目将协助将以前收集的数据整合到这种新格式中，使第二语言学习者、希望保护其语言遗产的社区成员、其他语言和文化爱好者以及其他研究人员能够访问这些大量的语言数据（目前仅供专家使用）。就更广泛的影响而言，该项目对那些如果年轻一代不学习就有可能永远消失的语言也特别重要。对保存社区语言感兴趣的非语言学家（尤其是社区本身的成员）将能够使用该项目的在线工具来记录他们的语言，而无需依赖专家。此外，该项目的课程创建应用程序将使用户能够创建许多濒危语言缺乏的学习材料，并将支持社区向年轻一代教授他们的语言的努力。

Of the approximately 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world, linguists estimate that nearly half will be extinct within the next century. Very few of these languages have been well documented, but for the past two decades researchers have been working with speakers of a variety of endangered languages to preserve the rich data these languages possess. This data is invaluable for language education efforts and for linguistic research on the incredible diversity of the world's languages. Unfortunately, however, much of this data resides in the personal files of these researchers, inaccessible to others interested in the language, and not in a form that enables the data to be shared easily. The COULD project (Cleaning, Organizing, and Uniting Linguistic Databases), a partnership between Canadian universities (Concordia and McGill) and Harvard University, is offering a solution to this problem. The main goal of the project is to create a new universal data format for language data, centralized online storage for this data, and a set of related online tools which will allow users all over the world to collect, preserve, and share language data more easily and more accurately. The project will assist with the integration of previously collected data into this new format, enabling this vast amount of linguistic data (currently only being used by specialists) to be accessible to second language learners, community members who would like to preserve their linguistic heritage, and other language and culture enthusiasts, in addition to other researchers. With respect to broader impacts, the project is also of particular importance for those languages that are in threat of disappearing forever if the younger generations do not learn them. Non-linguists interested in preserving a community's language (especially members of the community itself) will be able to use the project's online tools to document their language without relying on experts. In addition, the project's lesson creation application will enable users to create learning materials, which are lacking for many endangered languages, and will support communities in their efforts to teach their language to younger generations.