LARA HOW MODERN INTERNET TECHNOLOGY COULD MAKE IRIS

LARA: HOW MODERN INTERNET TECHNOLOGY COULD MAKE IRIS MURDOCH MORE ACCESSIBLE Elham Akhlaghi Susan Arthure Branislav Bédi Haraldur Berharðsson Fatih Bektaş Enet. Collect (CA 16105) European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques Harald Berthelsen Matt Butterweck Cathy Chua Catia Cucchiarini Gülşen Eryiğit Johanna Gerlach Hanieh Habibi Junta Ikeda Neasa Ní Chiaráin Manny Rayner Sabina Sestigiani Steinþór Steingrímsson Helmer Strik Ghil’ad Zuckermann Ingibjörg Þórisdóttir

OUTLINE 1. What would Iris Murdoch have thought of LARA? 2. What is LARA? 3. How could LARA help people read Iris Murdoch?

1. What would Iris Murdoch have thought of LARA?

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION So what is LARA? Why would I find it interesting?

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION You’re interested in languages, technology, Tolkien…

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION … would you like to know how technology could help you learn Tolkien’s favourite language?

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION And how would that work?

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION I’ll show you.

THE VÖLUSPÁ • Epic poem in Old Norse • One of Tolkien’s favourite pieces of literature • LARA version by Branislav Bédi, Haraldur Berharðsson, Matt Butterweck, Manny Rayner and Ingibjörg Þórisdóttir Link to content

2. What is LARA?

r/lara ollecto /c h. c e ig n. u https: //www BACKGROUND CALLECTOR • Three year project funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (Apr 2018 – Dec 2021) • Closely integrated with enet. Collect COST network • Top-level goal: social network for crowdsourcing CALL content • Two kinds of content: speech and text LARA • Subproject started Q 3 2018 • Informal international collaboration: University of Geneva, University of Iceland, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Swinburne University, University of Adelaide, Istanbul Technical University, Trinity College Dublin, Radboud University Nijmegen, unaffiliated collaborators

LARA: TOP-LEVEL GOALS • Help students learn language through reading • Help teachers create student-friendly reading material • Create an online community centred around using LARA • Do it in an ethically justifiable way

LARA FUNCTIONALITY “Personalised concordance”

LARA FUNCTIONALITY: AUDIO + TRANSLATIONS Hover any word Click on any loudspeaker

PEDAGOGICAL BACKGROUND Initial idea • Text content to help people learn a language by reading • Key questions that LARA helps answer: • Where have I seen that word before? • How is that word/sentence pronounced? • What does that word/sentence mean? Pedagogy Branislav Bédi • Reading comprehension is the product of three main factors: 1. Considerate texts, 2. The compatibility of the reader’s knowledge and text content, and 3. The active strategies the reader employs to enhance understanding and retention, and to circumvent comprehension failures. (Palincsar & Brown, 1984)

ETHICAL ASPECTS Cathy Chua • Open source: Code freely available on Source. Forge • Documented: Online documentation • Maintainable: Several people already collaborating on code Chua and Rayner. 2018. What do the founders of online communities owe to their users? Chua et al. 2018. Decentralising power: how we are trying to keep CALLector ethical Chua and Rayner 2019: Vegetarian vampires: why the CALL platform provider doesn‘t need to suck the teacher‘s blood

LANGUAGES SUPPORTED Nontrivial content produced Basic testing only English Icelandic Czech Danish Farsi French Greek Norwegian Italian German Polish Swedish Middle High German Romanian Slovak Slovenian Swahili Turkish Irish Dutch Barngarla Old Norse Japanese Portuguese Finnish Boldface = support for automatic tagging = fast development

JAPANESE

TH 14 CENTURY ITALIAN

BARNGARLA LARA version of Barngarlidhi Manoo (Zuckermann et al 2019)

LINGUISTICS Extract from Revivalistics, Cross-Fertilization and Wellbeing: Awakening Hebrew and Other Sleeping Beauty Languages (forthcoming book by Oxford University Press)

CREATING LARA CONTENT: FIRST FIND YOUR TEAM • Editor/linguist: Edit/mark up text • Translator: Translate into student language • Voice talent: Record audio • Software engineer: Assist with markup,

TEAM FOR VÖLUSPÁ EFFORT • Editor/linguist • Translator • Voice talent • Software engineer

LARA PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE PHP LARA web portal Pytho n Compiler/back-end

TASKS: MAINTAIN CONTENT LIBRARY (EDITOR)

TASKS: UPLOAD AND CONFIGURE (EDITOR)

TASKS: EDIT AND MARK UP TEXT (EDITOR AND PERHAPS SOFTWARE ENGINEER)

TASKS: ADD TRANSLATIONS (TRANSLATOR)

TASKS: RECORD AUDIO (VOICE TALENT)

“READING PROGRESS”: CENTRAL IDEA OF PROJECT • Stick together different texts into a single virtual document • Let reader find out where they have seen words before • And going back to Iris Murdoch…

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION Yes?

3. How could LARA help people read Iris Murdoch?

EXAMPLE OF A “READING PROGRESS” Link to content

LOVE OF LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS LARA is designed for people who love literature and don’t mind living on the internet

FOR MORE INFORMATION: HTTPS: //WWW. UNIGE. CH/CAL LECTOR/LARA/ Thank you!