Digisami and digital natives: Interaction technology for the North Sami language

Abstract

The DigiSami project operates in the general context of revitalisation of endangered languages, and focuses on the digital visibility and viability of the North Sami language in particular. The goal is to develop technological tools and resources that can be used for speech and language processing and for experimenting with interactive applications. Here we propose an interactive talking robot application as ameans to reach these goals, and present preliminary analyses of a spoken North Sami conversational corpus as a starting point for supporting interaction studies. These are first steps in the development of SamiTalk, a Sami-speaking robot application which will allow North Sami speakers to interact with digital resources using their own language. The on-going work addresses the challenges of the digital revolution by showing that multilingual technology can be applied to small languages with promising results.