What is it about?
This article argues that web-development frameworks that simplify the creation of interactive apps can help scholars create innovative dictionaries of low-resource languages by lowering engineering costs and fostering experimentation. This paper focusses on one of these frameworks, Shiny, and reports on how it has been successfully used to create novel historical dictionaries of Sanskrit and Tibetan.
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Why is it important?
With many languages at risk of extinction, online dictionaries & glossaries are increasingly crucial. Unfortunately, the languages most in need of such resources face the biggest challenges. The availability of digital infrastructure for a language is proportional to its representation - the more data that is available in digital format, the easier it becomes to automatically process it. Conversely, the less a language/culture is represented online, the higher the costs of retrieving and processing data about it. This article proposes that adopting web frameworks that vastly simplify the development of digital apps can help redress this inequality by drastically reducing the costs and technical expertise required to create, publish and maintain online dictionaries.
Perspectives
As a lexicographer working with low-resource ancient languages, I wish this research had been available to me when I first started out developing my dictionary.
Ligeia Lugli
University of London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Agile Lexicography: Rapid Dictionary Prototyping with R Shiny, with Examples from Projects on Sanskrit and Tibetan, October 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004702660_007.
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