As a member of the Apertium collective and developer of machine translators for several endangered and under-resourced Romance languages, I would like to express my dismay at the decision to discontinue research and teaching activities on language technology and most especially those related with VISL and CG. These tools are one of the pillars for our developments for languages such as Aragonese, Asturian, Occitan, Arpitan, Sardinian and Sicilian. These languages lack automatic translators developed by the large multinational companies and are unlikely to have them due to the small number of electronic resources available in them. I know positively that, for the same reasons, these tools are being actively used by colleagues for dozens of other endangered and/or under-resourced languages on all five continents.
Hèctor Alòs i Font Apertium and Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (Universitat de Barcelona) Missatge de 'Eckhard Bick' via Constraint Grammar < [email protected]> del dia dl., 8 de maig 2023 a les 13:45: > Dear all, > > Motivated by politically forced downsizing requirements, SDU has decided > to close entire sections of its research and teaching activities. > Specifically, the Department of Language, Culture, History and > Communication has decided to discontinue its language technology > activities, which concerns the infrastructure and people behind VISL, > Corpuseye and CG-based research. > > If you think this infrastructure is important and should be maintained > despite the university's financial situation, please send us a support > mail. Especially if you have personal or institutional arguments for > doing so as a user. > > We will collect your mails and use them to influence the decision makers. > > Best, > > Eckhard Bick & Tino Didriksen > > > > > -- > Eckhard Bick, > cand.med., dr.phil. > University of Southern Denmark > e-mail: [email protected] > web: http://beta.visl.sdu.dk > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Constraint Grammar" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/constraint-grammar/6afe14e8-3044-0e3d-7070-b23a387231cf%40mail.dk > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Constraint Grammar" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/constraint-grammar/CANTLNUqnag82fUy9eOKsOEWBa%2B0kgr85QD2hmn_ncB_4ncYjfg%40mail.gmail.com.
