On 19th November 2005, ACALAN, Linguasphere Observatory and Language Observatory had a meeting at Hotel Acropole, nearby the WSIS Conference Complex, to discuss about a joint action plan.

15th November 2005, Dr. Zavarsky, Ms. Carla nd myself attended the Round Table meeting organized by African Academy of Languages (ACALAN). The meeting was held as one of parallel events registered at World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), Tunis phase (see official record of the events here). As shown in photo, the event was also held as a part of "THE AFRICAN ICT WEEK".



The meeting was attended by various groups from all around the globe. In the front line from right (in front of screen), Daniel Pimienta from FUNREDES (Dominican Republic), Daniel Prado from UNION LATIN (France), David Pearson from SIL International, myself, Antoni Mir i Fullana from Casa de les Llengues (Barcelona), Viola Krebs from ICvolunteers (Geneve). The main table on the back was seated by Adama Samassekou (President of ACALAN) at the center, and Claudio Menezes from UNESCO on the left, etc.

11月16日から18日までチュニスで開催された世界情報社会サミット（WSIS）に，NGOとして登録し，参加してきました．アフリカ大陸に行くのは初めてでしたし，フランス語とアラビア語しか通じない社会なので戸惑うこともありましたが有益な１週間でした．以下，ご参考までに簡単にポイントのみ報告します．

１．注目されていたドメイン名管理体制については，事前の予想通り何の変化もありませんでした．

２．一番注目されたのはMITメディアラボの持ち込んだ100ドルラップトップで，メディアの注目を集めていました．各国の文部省だけを相手にこの値段で来年から発売開始するそうです．

３．言語天文台としては，アフリカ言語アカデミー（ACALAN），世界中の言語カタログを作成しているLinguasphere Observatory（イギリス，ウェールズ州）との間で，アフリカのウェブドメインについての言語センサスを実施することで合意しました．年末に，アフリカ各言語の専門家にマリ共和国の首都バマコに集まってもらい，われわれの言語判定エンジンをトレーニングして，来年２月２１日の世界母語記念日にパリのユネスコ本部で発表するという段取りです．われわれにとって初めての本格的調査になります．

４．来年４月の国際母語記念日には，ユネスコが言語間デジタルデバイド解消のための５ヵ年のアクション計画を発表することになっており，これを演出するひとつの材料としてユネスコ本部も大いに注目，支援してくれるようです．ありがたいことでした．

５．イギリスのLinguasphere Observatoryはこれまでに作成してきた言語カタログ情報をISO639のパート6として国際規格に提案しており，その登録機関になることを希望しています．言語天文台としてはこことMOUを調印しましたが，この調印式にはイギリスの産業大臣まで出席してくれました．登録機関としての提案はBSIもサポートしているようです．これはISO/TC37のどこかのSCで討議されているようです．

６．このほか，WIKIMEDIA，ラテン系諸語（仏，伊，西，葡，ルーマニア語）の普及促進団体であるUNION LATINA，カリブ海中南米の言語活動をフォローしているFUNREDES（ドミニカ共和国），カタロニア語の正当な認知を求めて活動し数年後に世界言語博物館の建設を計画しているバルセロナ州所在の団体であるHOUSE of LANGUAGESなど，実に多様なNGOとの間で有益な意見交換を行うことができました．

７．開催地がアフリカであったことから，残念ながらアジア諸国からの参加は低調でした．

チュニスについての事前知識はほとんどありませんでしたが，昔のカルタゴであったとわかって急に身近な感じがしてきました．何よりも，テロ騒ぎも何もなく，無事に戻ってこれたことは幸いでした．取り急ぎ，ご報告まで．

Language Observatory, African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) and Linguasphere Observatory have been collaborating on African Web Language Survey Project since Tunis phase of WSIS held in Tunis during 14-18 November 2005. It conincided with the launch of the African ICT Week initiated by African Union Commission.

Objectives of the project are:

1. To get the most accurate language map of African cyberspace and the status of “digital divide” in African continent, and to raise public awareness of it
2. To demonstrate the usefulness of multi-stakeholders’ collaboration under the umbrella of the World Network for Linguistic Diversity

Expected deliverables of the project are:

1. Language Map of African Cyberspace (Cyberspace Language Census Report): To show how many pages are written in each language, in each country domain.
2. Web Usage Maturity Analysis Report: To show how web technology are used in each country domain. For example, web links, web maintenance, server technology, open source software usage, etc.
3. Web Infrastructure Report: To show network performance and geographical locations of web servers.

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Date	Actions & Events
2005/11/15	The Round Table organized by African Academy of Languages (ACALAN). The meeting was held as one of parallel events registered at World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), Tunis Phase. Members involved in this project first met and discussed the common interests.(see archive)
2005/11/19	ACALAN, Linguasphere Observatory and Language Observatory had a meeting at Hotel Acropole, nearby the WSIS Conference Complex, to discuss about a joint action plan. (see archive)
2006/02/11	The experimental survey draft of Cyberspace Language Census was circulated among the members for their review
2006/02/21-24	The 7th International Mother Language Day cerebrated at UNESCO Headquarter, Paris. During this week members discussed the project and future action agenda. (see UNESCO Web News)
2006/??	African Web Survey Workshop will be organized by members, hosted by ACALAN in Bamako, Mali. Several African eperts will be invited to join to the workshop to have a detailed discussion how to implement the survey.
2006/11/14-20	2nd African ICT Week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. During this event, the final reports of the project will be announced.

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REFERENCE
[1] Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing online
[2] African Union Commission's site on African ICT Week

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Date	: 26-28 June, 2006
Place	: Bamako, Mali
Organizer	: African Acadey of Languages : Language Observatory
Sponsor	: Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Supporter	: ICVolunteers

6/26 Mon
09:00-09:30	Opening Speech (Adama Samassekou, President of the African Academy of Languages)
09:30-11:00	African language survey project
	1. Introduction to LOP
	2. Survey of African languages on the web
	3. Result of preliminary surveys
	(Yoshiki Mikami, the Leader of LOP, Prof. of Nagaoka University of Technology,
	Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
11:00-12:00	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
	Experts are requested to report a general description of language situation in each country/ region
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
15:30-16:00	Tea break
16:00-17:30	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
6/27 Tue
09:00-12:00	Introduction to Language Identification Module (LIM)
	(Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
	1.Key concepts of LIM
	2.How to use LIM
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-17:00	Practice in LIM (Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
	1. Collecting sample pages using the Internet
	2. How to analyze collected pages
	Lectures will be held using a projector. An access to the Internet is also required.
	It would be helpful of participants if they bring their own PCs and can access the Internet.
6/28 Wed
09:00-10:00	Presentation on the aspects of our survey by Nagaoka University’s side
	1. Web link analysis of African web
	2. Open source software usage
	3. Network connection
	4. Offshore server
10:00-12:00	Discussion on the aspects of our survey
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-17:00	Planning how to implement project, especially on the composition of the final report, the assignment of the themes, the schedule of reviews and publication, the formality of the report, etc.

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Name	Title
Adama Samassekou	Président, Académie Africaine des Langues, Mali
Mikami Yoshiki	Professor, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan Leader, Language Observatory Project
Tunde Adegbola	Executive Director, African Languages Technology Initiative (Alt-I), Nigeria
Marcel Diki-Kidiri	Chargé de Recherche, Laboratoire Langage Langues et Culture d’Afrique noire (LLACAN), France
Alfred Dailex Mtenje	Professor, University of Malawi Chancellor College, Malawi
Mamadou Lamine Sanogo	Chargé de Recherche, Institut des Sciences des Sociétés, Burkina Faso
Naomi Luchera Shitemi	Associate Professor, Moi University, Kenya
Thierry Afane-Otsaga	Enseignant-Chercheur, Université Omar Bongo, Gabon
Solomon Atnafu Basufekad	Assistant Professor, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Bechir Raddaoui	Ministry of Communication Technologies, Tunisia
Said Chemakh	Assistant-Teacher in linguistic, DLCA, Human Sciences and Languages School, University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria
Viola Krebs	IC Volunteers, Geneva
Virach Sornlertlamvanich	Co-director, Thai Computational Linguistics Laboratory (TCL), Thailand
Emmanuel Sagara	ACALAN
Soulaymane Sangare	ACALAN
Kodama Shigeaki	Researcher, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan
Shiota Katsuhiko	Lecturer, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan
Ikechkwu Anyanwu	President, Placade Japan

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Pariticipating African Countries

Bamako, République du Mali, 26 au 28 juin 2006

Organizer: Académie Africaine des Langues et Language Observatory
Sponsor: Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Supporter: ICVolunteers

6/26
09:00-09:30	Discours d'ouverture (Adama Samassekou, Président de l'Académie Africaine des Langues)
09:30-11:00	Projet de recherche liée aux langues africaines
	1. Introduction au LOP
	2. Recherche liée aux langues africaines sur le web
	3. Résultat des recherches préliminaires
	(Yoshiki Mikami, Directeur du LOP, professeur de l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
11:00-12:00	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
14:00-15:30	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
15:30-16:00	Pause-café
16:00-17:00	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
6/27
09:00-12:00	Introduction au module d’identification des langues (LIM) (Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	1. Concepts essentiels du LIM
	2. Comment utiliser le LIM
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
14:00-17:00	Formation du LIM (Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	1. Collecter les échantillons sur l’Internet
	2. Comment analyser les échantillons collectés Le modérateur fera la lecture avec le projecteur. L’accès à Internet sera nécessaire. Il est plus utile que les participants apportent leurs ordinateurs de sorte qu’ils puissent accéder à Internet.
6/28
09:00-10:00	Présentation des aspects de la notre recherche par l’Université technologique de Nagaoka
	1. Analyse des liens entre les sites Internet africains
	2. Utilisation de logiciels libres
	3. Connexion à la toile
	4. Serveurs offshores
10:00-12:00	Discussion des aspects de notre recherche
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
16:00-17:00	Projeter d’exécuter du projet, particulièrement, en ce qui concerne la composition du rapport final, la distribution des thèmes, Horaire des révisions et de la publication, forme du rapport, etc.

Name of Advisor	Affiliation	Location
Claudio Menezes	UNESCO	Paris, France
Paul Hector	UNESCO	Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Adama Samassekou	ACALAN	Bamako, Mali
Emmanuel Sagara	ACALAN	Bamako, Mali
David Dalby	Linguasphere Observatory	Wales, UK
Debbie Garside	Linguasphere Observatory	Wales, UK
Om Vikas	TDIL, Ministry of IT	New Delhi, India
Ahmad Zaki Abu Bakar	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)	Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Ali Selamata	UTM	Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Virach Sornlertlamvanich	TCL/NICT	Bangkok, Thailand
Canasai Kruengkrai	TCL/NICT	Bangkok, Thailand
Thatsanee Charoenporn	TCL/NICT	Bangkok, Thailand
Timothy Baldwin	The University of Melbourne (UniMelb)	Melbourne, Australia
Baden Hughes	UniMelb	Melbourne, Australia
Chea Sok Huor	PAN Localization	Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Valaxay Dalaloy	Science Technology & Environment Agency	Vientiane, Lao PDR
S.T. Nandasara	University of Colombo	Colombo, Sri lanka
Sebastiano Vigna	Milano University	Milano, Italy
Paolo Boldi	Milano University	Milano, Italy
Massimo Santini	Milano University	Milano, Italy
Michael Stack	Internet Archive	San Fransisco, USA
Gordon Mohr	Internet Archive	San Fransisco, USA
Hammam Riza	IPTEKnet, BPPT	Jakarta, Indonesia
Hajime Ohiwa	Keio University	Fujisawa, Japan
Ikechukwu Anyanwu	Placade Japan	Nagaoka, Japan
Kozo Ishizaki	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan
Ario Ohsato	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan
Mitsuru Kano	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan
Masahiro Iwahashi	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan
Takashi Yukawa	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan
Kazuhide Yamamoto	NUT	Nagaoka, Japan

DATE: February 21-24 2006
PLACE: UNESCO, Paris
Linguistic and cultural diversity in cyberspace is one of the priorities identified at the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). During its second phase in Tunis, a new institutional network was created by the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), under the auspices of the African Union and NEPAD: "World Network for Linguistic Diversity". And this new network was officially inaugurated by the Director General of UNESCO, H.E. Koïchiro Matsuura, in Paris at the occasion of the World Mother language Day 2006. A two-day workshop followed the launch.

See also
1. UNESCO WebWorld News
2. Report by ICVolunteers

Language Observatory was invited to attend The First Pan African Cultural Congress. The congress was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at African Union's head office.


African Union's Head Office Entrance

On the second day (November 14th) of the congress, the session on "Culture, Language and Education" was convened. In the session, the first presentor, Mr. Adama Samassekou, the president of the African Academy of languages (ACALAN), invited me to present a short report on our joint survey project "African Web Survey". I reported a brief summary of the survey. 54% of web-pages in African domains are written in English, 30% are in French, 4% are in Arabic, but only 0.5% are in African languages, etc.


African Union's Main Conference Room

After two initial presentations, the floors are invited to discuss. Although there are some optimism like "African children are now ready to go into cyberspace. The new generations of Africa are quite ready for ICT.", majority recognizes a serious need of actions to be taken. "an access to ICT should be democratized", "grass-root use of ICT is the key", "IPR does not belong to musicians, that's the problem", "heritage is our pride, we should create historical, cultural contents using our own languages", "negative attitude of intellectuals to our mother tongue is the major cause behind the problem", "why we don't teach university students by our own languages?", "while Holywood is totally digitized, our film makers are still using celluloid film", "there are no e-dictionaries of our languages, no virtual museum of our culture in cyberspace", etc.

One of the Bamako workshop participants in June 2006, Mr. Alfred Mtenje from Malawi, proposed two immediate actions.
1) To support creation of on-line African language courses and
2) To support "intellectualization of African languages" (to start and encourage the use of African languages beyond primary school level).

While majority of participants focuses cultural, social aspects of the issue and does not mention much about technology aspects, I hope that our report gave some impacts to consider "digital language divide" issue during the session.

2005

DATE	EVENT
2005/11/19	African Web Survey Project discussed and agreed between Academy of African Languages (ACALAN), Linguasphere Observatory and Language Observatory
2005/11/16-18	Language Observatory attend WSIS Tunis Phase
2005/11/17	MOU signed with Linguasphere Observatory, UK
2005/10/20	First version of language Idenfier Module released
2005/05/12	Language Observatory and Milano University team preented joint poster at WWW2005, Chiba. MOU signed with Milano University
2005/05/10	WSIS UNESCO Thematic Meeting on Multilingualism at bamako, Mali. Prof.Zaki of UTM attended on behalf of the Language Observatory
2005/04/28	Prof. K. Machida delivered a lecture on grammatological informatics
2005/04/19	Dr. M. Iwahashi's lab members visited LOP
2005/04/15	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is assigned as the first Regional Language Observatory in charge for Malaysia and OIC coutries
2005/04/01	Dr. Chubachi joined NUT/LOP team
2005/03/28	Mr. Göndri Nagy János from Miskolc University joined NUT/LOP team
2005/02/24-25	LOWS Technical Meeting at Oginoshima in deep snow
2005/02/21-23	The Second Language Observatory Workshop (LOWS) held at TUFS campus, Fuchu, Tokyo

2004

DATE	EVENT
2004/12/23	WE receiveda the first serious claim from an American online joural pulisher
2004/11/xx	GII servers' memories and HDD augmented
2004/10/23	Big earthquake hit our campus and Nagaoka region
2004/10/13	A delegation of Language Observatory (Y. Mikami & V. Narayanan) visited Malaysian MIMOS
2007/07/09-23	Test crawling on OIC, India and Indochina, successfully collected 25,762,053 unique pages
2004/07/xx	Dr. Zavarsky visited USA to discuss with Internet Archive, Basis Technology and others
2004/06/xx	Three Milano University team members visited NUT and brought us powerful and reliable "UbiCrawler"
2004/04/XX	Dr. Zavarsky visited Milano to discuss collaboration with Università degli Studi di Milano (USM)
2004/04/15	Twenty servers were installed at the observatory
2004/03/XX	The Language Observatory project received an official support letter from UNESCO.
2004/02/20-21	The First Language Observatory Workshop (FLOWS 2004) was held in Nagaoka, Japan with attendance of UNESCO representative. The observatory officially commenced operation. (Media coverage on FLOWS)
2004/02/17	Japanese National Commission for UNESCO committed official support to FLOWS 2004.

2003

DATE	EVENT
2003/10/01	Official LOP website was created.
2003/09/18	The Language-Observatory project was selected by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) as one of its RISTEX program.
2003/06/xx	The Language Observatory project proposed to Japan Science and technology Agency (JST)

... see more for LOP pre-history

2005

*Sorted by The Date of Event (First Column)

Date	Conference Name	Venue	Authors/ Partaker	Deadline 1 (Abstract/Full Submission Deadline) & Notification	Deadline 2 (Full Paper Submission)
January 10-1	Int. Conf. on E-Commerce	USJ Summit Selangor, Malaysia	Zaidi & Mikami	September 30, 2004	December 11, 2004 (Presented)
February 21-25	The Second Language Observatory Workshop (LOWS2) 2005	Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS), Japan			February 16, 2005 (Presented)
March 14-16	NLP 2005[�語��学会第11回�次�会]	Kagawa Univ. Japan	Mikami		(Presented)
April 6-8	27th UNICODE Conference	Berlin, Germany			March 18, 2005 (Registration) (Not Attending)
April 15-16	UTM-NUT Official Signing Ceremony	UTM Skudai, Malaysia			(Attended)
April 30	SEARCC Exco Meeting	Sydney
May 6-7	WSIS Regional Conference (ACALAN)	Bamako, Mali	Zaki, Mikami & Zaidi		(Attended)
May 10-14	WWW2005	Chiba, Japan	NUT & USM	Feb 7, 2005/March 7 (Accepted)	March 21, 2005 (Final submission Proceedings)/May 10, 2005 (Poster for reception) (Attended)
June 10	NLP for Under Resourced Language	Dourdan, Paris	Ko Ko & Mikami	March 10, 2005/April 7 (Accepted)	April 15, 2005 (Submitted)
June 21-23	Int. Conf. on ICT for Development 2005	Putrajaya, Malaysia	Zaki, Mikami & Zaidi	March 14, 2005 (Accepted)	(Attending)
July	Univ. of Milano Visit	USM, Italy	Chubachi		(Attending)
July 14-17	Corpus Linguistics 2005	University of Birmingham	Pavol		(Attending)
August 2-4, 2005	10th Int. Conf. on Translation	Sabah, Malaysia	Zaidi & Mikami	December 31, 2004 (Accepted)	April 15, 2005 (Submitted)
Sept. 12-16, 2005	MT Summit X	Phuket, Thailand	Pavol, Mikami & Wada	June 28, 2005 (Accepted)	May 13, 2005 (Submitted)/ Camera Ready on July 22
Sept 28-30, 2005	South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC) 2005	Sydney, Australia	Zaidi, Mikami, Zaki & Om	June26, 2005 (Accepted)	April 22, 2005 (Submitted)/ Camera Ready on July 31
Oct. 10-13, 2005	IJCNLP 2005	Jeju, Korea			April 15, 2005 (Attending)
Nov 15-19	World Summit on IS	Tunis, Tunisia
Dec 18-20, 2005	ICON	Kanpur, India	Nara & SAORA		May 31, 2005
Dec	NUT Bulletin of Language Science and Humanities	Japan	Tomoe,   Ko Ko & William		May 20, 2005
	社会技術研究論文集Vol.3				June 30, 2005
	FIT	Japan			Apr. 28, 2005
Oct 18-20, 2005	AFIT 04	Cebu, Philipines

2006

Date	Conference Name	Venue	Authors	Deadline 1 (Abstract Submission Deadline)	Deadline 2 (Full Paper Submission)
Feb 21-25, 2006	The 3rd Language Observatory Workshop 2006
Sept 2006	UNICODE
May 22-26, 2006	WWW 2006	Edinburgh, Scotland