Sorosoro had the ambition to progressively set up the Digital language Encyclopedia  - the first facet of the program.

Out of the 6 000 languages that exist on the planet, half of them are at risk of disappearing during this century. And out of the 3 000 languages that could disappear, the majority do not have written documents or dictionaries that would allow us to preserve these languages and to safeguard their memory. As a consequence, when the last speaker dies, we lose their language and its knowledge forever.

The researchers, linguists and anthropologists are doing tremendous work and have succeeded in the safeguard of many languages that would have disappeared form the human memory if this descriptive and writing work had not been done. Our aim is to complement their work with filmed data.

The shootings and the images’ collection

So, Sorosoro accompanies the researchers and sends teams on the field in order to record in images and in sounds what makes the essence of a language and of a culture, according to a specification established with the scientists. Our shooting teams manage to bring back about ten hours of filmed data for each studied language.

The preservation

At the same time, a preservation plan of all these collected documents is implemented with the INA (National Institute of the radio and television -french library of television archives) in order to safeguard all these data in a lasting way. This plan will consist of different phases:

- systematic digitalization,

- storage in an ad hoc place, with a regular process of integral copy in order to avoid the progressive

loss of elements,

- classification and indexing of the documents to provide easy access to the data.

A database with an encyclopedic vocation

The collected images and sounds, associated with the written data that come from the academic research (transcriptions, translations, metadata, etc.), will form a database that will be enriched with the passing of the years.

Available for the scientists’ research, this “encyclopedia” made of images, sounds and texts will also be, for the present and for the next generations, a real repository of knowledge for the languages and the cultures that are at risk of becoming extinct.