The 'Digital Language Vitality Scale'
The digital language vitality of a language is the extent to which that language is present, used and usable over the Internet and digital devices (PCs as well as mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, Internet TV etc.).
There are different levels of digital vitality: a language can be used extensively over all devices and in all domains or it can lack the very basic infrastructure to be used.
DLDP has developed a scale to approximately assess digital vitality, by evaluating a number of parameters.
The DLDP 'digital language vitality scale' is an instrument that can be used by language communities for assessing the level of digital vitality of their language and help them plan ahead the measures they wish to take in order to increase the digital use of their language.
The Training Programme
The DLDP training programme has been created to support the long-term maintenance of Europe’s regional and minority languages through the fostering of their digital presence.
It is available to those speakers of regional and minority languages who want to know why and how to increase the presence of their languages online and how to do it practically: which tools and techniques are available, which media are more suitable, which aspects need to be addressed first.
The 'Digital Language Survival Kit'
The DLDP 'digital language survival kit' is an instrument which aims at allowing regional and minority languages’ speakers and communities to learn about concrete actions and initiatives that can improve the level of vitality of their language, after assessing the latter by means of the DLDP 'digital language vitality scale'.
In this set of recommendations, we suggest some actions that may be taken – mostly at the grassroots level – to make a language progress towards the next steps of digital vitality.
Localized Kits
- Basque Kit (Spanish version | Basque version)
- Breton Kit (French version | Breton version)
- Karelian Kit (Finnish version | Karelian version)
- Sardinian Kit (Italian version)
The 'Roadmap to Digital Language Diversity'
In order to establish a sustainable policy for safeguarding and promoting European and global linguistic diversity, policies for digital development have to be embraced.
With so much of our lives happening in the Internet and through digital devices, the digital domain represents a context that can not be ignored.
If we are to ensure a European digital language diversity for future generations, we need substantive European level policies and legislation that act to protect that diversity.
If non-speakers of these languages are facing a digital time-bomb as with current trajectories of digital development, they will be excluded from using their own language in an increasingly digitized society.
Key recommendations of the DLDP 'roadmap to digital language diversity' are: the ensurement, by the legislation, of the fact that States develop digital services in lesser-used languages so as to deal with the impending digital time-bomb; the extension of the Digital Language Diversity Project to conduct, on behalf of the EU, a Europe-wide survey on the digital needs of all European lesser-used languages.
Short Versions
- English version
- Basque version
- Finnish version
- French version
- German version
- Italian version
- Spanish version