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Dialogues with Social Robots pp 3–19Cite as

DigiSami and Digital Natives: Interaction Technology for the North Sami Language

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 427))

Abstract

The DigiSami project operates in the general context of revitalisation of endangered languages, and focuses on the digital visibility and viability of the North Sami language in particular. The goal is to develop technological tools and resources that can be used for speech and language processing and for experimenting with interactive applications. Here we propose an interactive talking robot application as a means to reach these goals, and present preliminary analyses of a spoken North Sami conversational corpus as a starting point for supporting interaction studies. These are first steps in the development of SamiTalk, a Sami-speaking robot application which will allow North Sami speakers to interact with digital resources using their own language. The on-going work addresses the challenges of the digital revolution by showing that multilingual technology can be applied to small languages with promising results.

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Acknowledgements

The work is funded by the Academy of Finland through the project Fenno-Ugric Digital Citizens (grant n°270082). The first author would also like to thank support of the Estonian Science Foundation project (grant n°IUT 20-56).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Kristiina Jokinen, Katri Hiovain, Niklas Laxström, Ilona Rauhala & Graham Wilcock

  2. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Kristiina Jokinen

Authors
  1. Kristiina Jokinen
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  2. Katri Hiovain
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  3. Niklas Laxström
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  4. Ilona Rauhala
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  5. Graham Wilcock
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristiina Jokinen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

    Kristiina Jokinen

  2. University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

    Graham Wilcock

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Jokinen, K., Hiovain, K., Laxström, N., Rauhala, I., Wilcock, G. (2017). DigiSami and Digital Natives: Interaction Technology for the North Sami Language. In: Jokinen, K., Wilcock, G. (eds) Dialogues with Social Robots. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 427. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2585-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2585-3_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-2584-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-2585-3

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