On 26 and 27 June, 30 invited experts from Armenia, Canada, France, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and the U.S. gathered at the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan to discuss challenges and opportunities at the intersection of IT and the Armenian language.

The workshop, entitled “Advancing Armenian Language through Information Technology and New Communication Tools” was the joint initiative of the Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan. It aimed to address the gap between the Armenian language and developments in IT, and to propose concrete suggestions and initiatives for the advancement of Armenian. It also initiated discussion within the larger community of academics and practitioners to identify key projects and potential funding sources for them.

The workshop was organized around four major themes:

• Technology, including language corpora, spellcheckers and translators;
•  Presentation, including typefaces, entry methods and integration of Armenian into operating systems and apps;
•  Language, including dictionaries and teaching tools;
•  Content, including the use of Armenian online media and genres.

Among the participants were linguists, IT professionals, writers, teachers, font designers and publishers, representing both Eastern and Western Armenian and spanning the spectrum of specialties across technology and language.

During the first day of the workshops participants analyzed the state of affairs, major issues and important developments in each of the four areas through keynote presentations and group discussions.

The second day was geared towards the development of specific project concepts with an outline of objectives, implementation details and potential resources. A handful of projects covering the four areas emerged from the process and will be published online in summary form in order to encourage review and critique by interested parties, further development, and matching with human, institutional and financial resources. A workshop report will also be available shortly.

The workshop was chaired by Pegor Papazian, Tumo board member, and Razmik Panossian from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. It was part of the Foundation’s “Armenian in 2115” Series of events.

For further information contact: [email protected] or [email protected]