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Library of Congress unveils plan to preserve early US sound recordings
Historic audio recordings aren't exactly easy to access and play back since they're often in obscure or aging formats and sit within giant repositories and private collections, but the Library of Congress is gearing up to help change that for researchers and the average joe. The outfit's freshly announced National Recording Preservation Plan is headlined by a recommendation to create a publicly accessible national directory of sound recordings that'll act as an "authoritative discography" with details regarding their production and where copies are housed. You'll still have to take a trip to a library to hear the recordings for the time being, but the Library of Congress is hoping to hammer out licensing agreements that would allow for online streaming. Developing new preservation standards and creating university-based degree programs for audio archiving are also among the 32 short- and long-term recommendations spelled out by the document. Click the second source link to peruse the paper yourself. [Image credit: Ray Tsang, Flickr]
Google, Mozilla and Wikimedia projects get Maya language translations at one-day 'translathon'
Twenty native speakers of Yucatec, Mexico's most widely spoken Mayan tongue, met last Thursday to help bring the language to Google, Mozilla and Wikimedia projects. The event, dubbed Mozilla Translathon 2012, was organized to provide translations for Firefox, Google's Endangered Languages Project, the WikiMedia software that powers Wikipedia and 500 crowdsourced articles, to boot. Finding the right words, however, can often be a tricky proposition. "There are words that can't be translated," Mozilla's Mexico representative Julio Gómez told CNNMéxico. "In Maya, file doesn't exist. Tab doesn't exist." Gómez continues to explain that the group may keep foreign words as-is, or find other terms to represent the same ideas. In addition to software localization, it's believed that the effort could allow Maya speakers to "recover their identity and their cultural heritage," according to Wikimedia México president Iván Martínez. If you'd like to peruse wiki articles in the indigenous language, check out the source links below.
