Nick Thieberger

Yapese recordings

13 May 202427 February 2023 by Nick Thieberger

Yap is one of four states of the Federated States of Micronesia, a small nation of some 12,000 people in the western Pacific. Like most Pacific languages, the language is Austronesian, and, like most of the hundreds of languages spoken in the Pacific, there are few recordings available in this language (see the OLAC listing … Read more

Linda Barwick AM FAHA

26 January 202326 January 2023 by Nick Thieberger

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick AM FAHA, on being honoured with an Order of Australia (Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia). Excellent recognition for her “significant service to the preservation and digitisation of cultural heritage recordings.” Linda is the founder of PARADISEC, and led it for most of its … Read more

Dessicated history can be rehydrated!

7 March 2022 by Nick Thieberger

A dried out audio cassette can’t be played. Cassettes that are stored in dry places lose the lubricant that allowed the tape to run over the playback heads. We have had several cassettes that were seemingly unplayable, and caused screeching noises you can hear in the room as the tape is played, and also on … Read more

Converting docx to FLEx format for dictionaries

29 October 202129 October 2021 by Nick Thieberger

Following the previous blog post I had requests for more detail on how to convert a word-processor dictionary into the format needed to put the text into the software Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx). I’ll set out the steps below, but it does require some knowledge of regular expressions that I’ll explain as I go (you … Read more

Reviving dictionaries

29 October 202110 October 2021 by Nick Thieberger

More on the theme of refreshing existing dictionaries (discussed a few times on this blog). The Kwara’ae language of Malaita, Solomon Islands, has had various dictionaries produced over time, some handwritten (this is an image of one of these in PARADISEC), and some created using computers. In running workshops with the Kulu Languages Institute over … Read more

Tape gumshoe

20 April 2021 by Nick Thieberger

Finding tapes that need to be digitised often involves some detective work. Recently, while waiting for a dropoff of tapes (yes, in car park 3), I mused on the noir nature of the work and came up with this vignette. Perhaps the trickiest collection I’ve dealt with was one created by Fr John Z’graggen in … Read more

From film to file: historical manuscripts released by PARADISEC

9 December 20208 December 2020 by Nick Thieberger

We are pleased to announce the release of a number of historical manuscripts in and about languages of the Pacific. We worked with the National Library of Australia to digitise microfilms and have now made them available as pdf files for download from our catalog. This work was supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

Honiara language workshop, August 2019

25 October 201929 August 2019 by Nick Thieberger

The Solomon Islands Kulu Language Institute (KLI) organised a workshop in August this year that attracted 100 participants representing 44 languages of the Solomon Islands.

The venue was the leaf house at Saint Barnabas Anglican Cathedral Grounds, Honiara. The workshop was sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, the Kulu Language Institute, the University of Melbourne, The Research Unit for Indigenous Language, and Islands Bible Ministries.

50 words of Australian languages project

27 October 201917 April 2019 by Nick Thieberger

The Research Unit for Indigenous Language is running a project in 2019/2020 to collect and present words in as many Australian Indigenous languages as possible. Please consider contributing to this project.

This project aims to provide resources for schools to teach at least fifty words in their local language.

We are asking for contributions of at least fifty words in as many Australian Indigenous languages as possible. The typed words need to be listed in a spreadsheet, with audio file recordings attached. Full instructions on capturing the details are on this website.

Local wifi versions of paradisec?

1 August 201827 July 2018 by Nick Thieberger

Getting records back to the places they came from is a major motivation for what we do at PARADISEC. Repatriation of unique analog artefacts is an important model, and digital records should, in principle, be easier to move to any place. However, not every place has capacity for access to or storage of digital files. In the Pacific there are few reliable digital repositories and the cultural agencies I know have little capacity to store or disseminate digital files. Internet connections are usually expensive and so discourage download of large files.

Earlier I talked about using Itunes to get records back to Erakor, the village where I work in Vanuatu. The computers that held the Itunes installation eventually stopped working and were replaced, but the language files were not copied over to the new computers.