Training native speakers in a community with low degree of contact

Presented by David Ginebra at the Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, Berlin & Online, 4-6 Sept, 2024 #lda2024 Training speakers of indigenous languages in language documentation skills is one of the first steps for implementing a collaborative documentation project (Benedicto et al. 2007; Czaykowska-Higgins 2009; Yamada 2010). However, the way these trainings are designed and implemented depend, to a great extent, on the degree of contact that the community had had with the national society. In this presentation, I will show how I trained a group of Yamalero speakers from Únuma (Colombia), a community with still quite limited contact with the national society. One year after these trainings, they have already been able to transcribe and translate 8 hours of time-aligned naturalistic speech. The trainings were divided into two periods (March 2023 and June 2023). In the first one, community members (i) acquired minimal computer literacy skills, and (ii) learnt the existing community orthography, in order to transcribe and translate on ELAN previously segmented recordings. Five community members took part in it, but only one kept working once I left the field. In the second training, they learnt (i) how to video-record a session, (ii) how to collect metadata, (iii) how to process these files, and (iv) how to segment a recording, so that they could become independent documenters. Six community members took part in this training, and three of them have been actively documenting their language since then. In this presentation, I will discuss the content and organization of these trainings and I will reflect upon some of the problems encountered and the solutions adopted. Additionally, I will discuss the benefits of a hands-on approach, following similar experiences (Harvey & Griscom 2020; Bolaños, Palacios & Seyfeddinipur 2022). Finally, the methods and tools adopted might also be useful to other researchers seeking to implement collaborative work with members of communities with low degree of contact with the national society. References Benedicto, Elena, Demetrio Antolín, Modesta Dolores, M.Cristina Feliciano, Gloria Fendly, Tomasa Gómez, Baudilio Miguel, Elizabeth Salomón. 2007. A Model of Participatory Action Research: The Mayangna Linguists Team of Nicaragua. In Proceedings of the XI FEL Conference on ‘Working Together for Endangered Languages - Research Challenges and Social Impacts,’ pp. 29-35. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: SKET, University of Malaya and Foundation for Endangered Languages. Bolaños, Katherine, Ricardo Palacio and Mandana Seyfeddinipur. 2022. A hub for documentation of languages in Colombia: model, concept building, and tools. Paper presented at the Language Documentation and Archiving Conference. Berlin/online: ELAR/Paradisec Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa. 2009. “Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working Within Canadian Indigenous communities.” Language Documentation & Conservation 3(1): 15–50. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4423 Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2020. Haydom language documentation training workshop - January 2020: a report. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3971733 Yamada, Racquel-María. 2010. “Speech Community-Based Documentation, Description, and Revitalization: Kari’nja in Konomerume.” PhD diss., University of Oregon, Eugene.