DLS Newsletter - October 2024

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Dictionary & Lexicography Services

SIL International

October 2024

A FLExible Approach to Picture Dictionaries

by Marlene Ferguson

A picture (visual) dictionary is a dictionary where pictures are the focus. Each picture is tagged with a caption, typically in two languages–a minority language and a language of wider communication.

I have created an MS Excel spreadsheet for creating picture dictionaries that has words in French arranged by semantic domain. The spreadsheet has a column where the vernacular equivalents can be added. The spreadsheet can then be imported (via mail merge process) into a customized MS Publisher template.

These picture dictionaries may be printed into beautiful books, which native speakers can browse, aiding language vitality efforts. However, the data collected may also be imported into FLEx, where it can then be published on Webonary, complete with the same images!

I am creating a new library of images for use in picture dictionaries. If you have photos of everyday objects, actions and jobs and are willing to share them, please contact me at [email protected]. Note that the pictures should have written permission to allow us to use and share them.

For more information check out Picture Dictionaries.

Rapid Word Collection (RWC) Workshop News

by Kevin Warfel

Marsha Relyea Miles organized a RWC workshop in Papua New Guinea for speakers of the Aruamu language in August. This was the first workshop to use The Combine’s fledgling laptop-as-server option.
A team is currently working on completing the translation of the semantic domain questionnaire into Malay so that the Lotud community can use it in a RWC workshop in the near future.
SIL’s Creation Care unit is currently conducting a RWC workshop in Kenya; this workshop is targeting a limited number of semantic domains (e.g., plants) and is led by Johnny Walker.
A full-scale RWC is planned for the Lokono community in Guyana, South America, in July 2025, with Dr. Juan Aviles heading up the effort. Grant proposals have been written and submitted to a variety of potential funding sources. There are a significant number of Lokono speakers who are excited about this idea and who will be very disappointed if the funding does not come through.

If you know of another RWC workshop that has happened this year or is being planned for sometime in the near future, DLS would like to know about it. For more information check out https://rapidwords.net/.

The Future

The Language Technology team is making progress toward developing the future SIL Lexical Tools Ecosystem. In the current system, FLEx is in the center of the ecosystem, but in the future, the data repository will be at the center. This will make it much easier to share lexical data between the many different tools.

My First Year in DLS

by Peter Oatley

It’s been an exciting year being part of the DLS team. Most of my work involves converting lexical data to import into FLEx, providing support for the Webonary website and creating Dictionary apps. My background is in computer support/systems management with a basic level of linguistics, so my first year has involved a lot of learning. I found the DLS courses very helpful in learning lexicography and the FLEx software, which was new to me. Another new skill I have learnt is building the Android apps.

It's been fun to work on dictionaries from around the world, discovering new scripts and learning how different languages work. I enjoy solving problems to create things, so converting data to import into FLEx and seeing the resulting dictionary published on Webonary and in an app is very satisfying.

DLS is Here to Help

DLS received a request for help from Dr. Myles Leitch of The Seed Company. He and his colleague, Dr. Guy Kouarata, plan to use a wordlist (different from CAWL) to collect vocabulary from speakers of 11 closely related languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the purpose of orthography development. DLS offered to import the wordlist into FLEx and create a project for each of the 11 languages in focus. Our clients were very pleased with the result, which allows data to be collected in table format in the Lexeme Form column in the Lexicon Edit Browse view as shown in the image below.

Dictionary-Making & Lexicography Courses

At a workshop earlier this year, one of the trainers from the CILTA equipping program discovered that the DLS Dictionary-Making & Lexicography courses are available in Spanish. She was already aware of the English courses and had found them incredibly valuable. She was so excited to learn that the courses were now available in Spanish and that she will be able to use these materials in her training of Latin American Bible translators.

DLS continues to make progress in the translation of both courses into French, Spanish and Portuguese.

You may access the courses here: https://sites.google.com/sil.o...

Dictionary Apps by DLS in Google Playstore

To access the Dictionary Apps in the Google Playstore, click here. To request an android dictionary app for your language, please fill out the application form.

Verna Stutzman, MA-Linguistics, MA-Counseling
Dictionary & Lexicography Services Coordinator
SIL International

[email protected]
Skype: verna.stutzman

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