Our organisation

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 14:04 — Sabine Eller

Vox Humanitatis is a not for profit organisation that cares about less resourced cultures (scope). We start from maintaining the culture by creating contents in the various languages and localizing software going the way of the so-called cultural localization. Of course one main point of our activities is helping education for and within less resourced cultures taking their usage back into everyday business. Many connected activities will help us to survive as an association.

Some notes on our history

First Vox Humanitatis was thought to go to Great Britain, but soon we understood that we would not be able to cope with it in terms of traveling and time expenditure. Italy then was the next logical destination for us. Wanting to concentrate on our goals to reach and to minimize time expenditure for travel and organisational tasks we talked with an association we know well: GoPiedmont, we organised the Festa dël Piemont 2008 with them. They offered us to integrate also because our goals are very much the same: them concentrating on Piedmontese culture, us on less ressourced cultures on an international level. So that is how Vox Humanitatis now has its base in Alba, Piedmont, Italy.

Projects and Communication

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 16:09 — Outi Sane

Vox Humanitatis works in various projects, partnering with universities and/or associations or just internal projects. We also support external related projects whenever possible.

As a consequence of our no double effort internal guideline, building alliances and partnerships has become possibly our most important field of activity.

The quantity of world-wide ongoing efforts is simply amazing, both in variety and quality. It's a pity that very often such efforts simply aren't aware of each other. We try our best to help increasing the inter-communication degree and you can help us do better. Please tell us about your projects!

Scope and Practical Goals

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 14:16 — Sabine Eller

Scope
The association Vox Humanitatis is focused on developing opportunities for less resourced cultures, so that they can be perceived by their native bearers as an element of dignity and an opportunity for social promotion. Thus it is establishing a “virtuous circle” that can help reinforcing cultural diversity, while at the same time spreading “knowledge about the other” and tolerance among different native communities. This includes peculiar communities that do not have an ethnic base, like sign-language communities and the likes.

Your help is needed

Thu, 03/05/2009 - 10:46 — Outi Sane

All our projects are open source or open content and therefore we work with volunteers.

In this specific moment you can help with:

1) the dictionary by adding and/or translating existing entries and there are two possibilities: or your work following your interests or you contribute to the OFWB (online specialist dictionary) of the University of Bamberg. For OFWB we may issue certificates signed by the university and Vox Humanitatis and also stages can be created.

2) Ambaradan, our software is still under development and help is needed in various parts, in particular the creation of various user interfaces for the most different usages of the database would be appreciated.

3) Collecting African languages to open content. Everybody should have right to study in their own native tongue. Now we start a project for learning's dictionary in African languages. There are several hundreds of languages non-visible here in internet. If you care about your language – join the team!

For further information please contact us directly at: info at voxhumanitatis dot org
 (just substitute the "at" with "@ and the "dot" with ".")

Supported Products

Wed, 03/04/2009 - 09:00 — Sabine Eller

Vox Humanitatis aims to help less resourced cultures find their place in the globalised economy. Economic weakness has a deadly effect on smaller cultures. They cannot stop globalisation and eventually they are erased and substituted by bulk imported behaviours and products.

Yet, they can use the ongoing processes to export their own economic and cultural identities, thus becoming attractive to a world-wide consumer base, a consumer base that can actively help in their protection.

Most of these cultures have no choice whatsoever. Whether they like it or not they will be joined anyway, so all we can address is how much control they retain on the ongoing process.

The Ambaradan project

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 11:32 — Bèrto ëd Sèra

Ambaradan is a free open source dictionary from any to any language. It is a repository that you may edit, correct and enrich with your own material, and that allows you sharing what you do, if such is your desire.

As a dictionary, it does not simply collect “words”. The size of a translatable item is unlimited, so you can also use it to store and retrieve translation memories, GUI system messages, etc. You can actually use it even to create a localised news service.

Specially designed for situations in which poor (or no) infrastructure is available, it can connect a loose network of solar-powered computers in places where no internet is available, or in which connection costs are simply too high to imagine a constant connection.

Further reading: Ambaradan, the OWm2 storage engine

The i-iter network

Sat, 10/03/2009 - 10:42 — Bèrto ëd Sèra

The i-iter network is a federation of on-line communities that are hosted and maintained by Vox Humanitatis. The aim of this service is twofold:

  • for less resourced languages we provide the means to build and grow on-line communities in that language, with tools to manage mailing lists, blogs, podcasts, video publishing, e-books etc, all of which can be localized.

  • for major languages we provide a mix of a site and RSS based planet that exposes what our users consider to be interesting sources about language(s).

If you are a native speaker of a less resourced language you can apply to the foundation to be assigned resources. The procedure is straightforward and there is no special requirement, we only ask you not to break the law.

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