Anyone who travels the world can make themselves understood everywhere with a mobile app. Speak your text, choose which language it should be and hold the speaker near your conversation partner. Well-known translation apps translate your words on the spot into dozens of languages from around the world.
This is more difficult within the Netherlands. Anyone who only speaks Veenkoloniaals or Zaand-Drents may have difficulty expressing themselves to someone who can only speak Dutch. The University of Groningen (RUG) wants to make that easier. Together with the Huus van de Taol in Beilen, it is working on a translation app for Low Saxon.
“Speech technology is already available for many languages,” confirms special professor Martijn Wieling. “The problem is that this is not yet the case for a language that consists of as many variants as Low Saxon. To develop this you need voice recordings, which are not available.”
Olthof is a regional language expert at the Huus van de Taol. According to her, it would be great if there was a translation app for Low Saxon. “I think there will be more connection this way. We have a national language, which is very beautiful. But there are still so many people who prefer to express themselves in Drenthe.”
“The fact is that not everyone speaks Drenthe anymore, but this way you have the opportunity to find each other. That there is a way to understand what someone else says, in their own language.”
Wieling is a special professor of Low Saxon and Groningen Language and Culture at the RUG. He points out the practical applications for people who can express themselves particularly well in their own regional language. “We are investing a lot in education, because there the language is somewhat declining. You could also use it in a care setting where someone who speaks pure Drenthe, and a caregiver who perhaps only speaks Dutch, can explain exactly what is wrong.”
The website has only just gone online and you can record it via both your mobile phone and a computer. Wieling hopes for around 100,000 recorded sentences. “Then we really have some data with which we can use voice technology boost can give.”
