Goals

What the Atlantis Project is for

Globalisation and the development and spread of digital technology in the Information Society provide excellent opportunities for creating spaces and tools for the use of many smaller languages. But the degrees of enterprise and know-how on which to draw from within the linguistic community vary, largely as a function of the size of that community. So unless special support is given to such communities, there is a real danger that networks will develop only in larger languages, and particularly the hegemonic languages in the respective States, in rapidly growing areas such as the Internet. Thus the smaller linguistic communities, and especially those whose language is not that of the State, need to have at their disposal both products that can satisfy new demands, and platforms which will allow them to share initiatives with partners whose languages face a similar challenge.

What can be found on the Atlantis Project website

This project consists of a website which leads on naturally from the Euromosaic report and the sixty language group reports on the website (http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic).

The tangible outcome is this website, the Atlantis Observatory, on which each of the six final reports are to be available, as well as multiple links to existing resources in the six categories, in the form of a searchable database.

The website brings together totally updated information on digital tools and resources available for LUL.

The final report underlines areas, projects and technology which, in the view of the consortium members, offer greatest potential for multiplying effects from one language group to another.

Work plan and timetable

Work on the project began in the spring of 2001, and was scheduled to be completed within a year. During this time, the questionnaire for data-gathering was designed and sent to key potential institutional and professional witnesses from 21 European Union lesser-used language groups, whose languages are not official languages of the Union. Later, the Atlantis Observatory website was designed and developed, as was the accompanying database. Click to view the structure and contents of the six reports and the database.

The team intends to apply for EU support in order to be able to move into Phase 2 of the Atlantis project, in which the database will be put to full use, thanks to pro-active activity in order to find new partners or customers willing to adapt existing resources.

The results of our research for this phase of the Atlantis Project can serve as a platform for further efforts in representing minority languages in the digital world. In this case the database should be maintained and updated by an independent organisation.