We are conducting a global survey about the difficulties facing Humanities scholars and students when working in digital environments when it comes to multi-lingual support. Please go to https://forms.gle/6mwduFjK7YTUHGR59 to fill out the four questions we have for you and let your voice be heard!
Many of us work in internationalized universities, in which researchers use different languages for research and scholarly communication. We know that our research infrastructures can fall short, however, in accommodating our linguistic and geo-cultural diversity.
As a follow up to the “Disrupting Digital Monolingualism” (DDM) conference at King’s College London (16-17 June 2020), we (Cosima Wagner of Freie Universität, David Wrisley of NYU Abu Dhabi, and Cornelis van Lit, Utrecht University and founder of The Digital Orientalist) wanted to do more. Our working group aims to draft a “requirement profile” for digital platforms (i.e. repository, WordPress, library catalog, XML editor, e-journal, etc) in which people use different languages. By requirement profile we mean a list of minimal standards that platforms would support to be accessible to different users. We are particularly interested in standards supporting non-Latin scripts.
So, if you are using more than one language or non-Latin scripts in digital environments then we want to hear from you in this survey about issues, workarounds, and downright dealbreakers that you experience every day.
What we will do with these answers: We will be collating the different answers we get for the purposes of including them in a short white paper, hopefully to provide developers and infrastructure specialists with design specifications. The white paper might also be published as part of a conference report by the DDM conference organisers by the end of June 2020.
How we will acknowledge your contribution: You can offer your opinion anonymously OR give your name and email. If you provide your name, respond to the questions and agree we will include your name on the white paper as one of the contributors. Please list it as you would like it to appear in the white paper.
We will NOT use emails for any other purpose than contacting you with follow-up questions.
This survey will close Friday 19 June 2020 at noon UTC
Please fill it out by visiting https://forms.gle/6mwduFjK7YTUHGR59
The Digital Orientalist 