Educational CyberPlayGround ®

Haitian Creole Language Technologies and Experts

Michel DeGraff ‏@MichelDeGraff Professor at MIT & director of MIT-Haiti Initiative for Kreyòl-based & technology-enhanced active learning:Science fact:
NATIVE languages (eg Kreyòl) are key tools for learning, including 2nd-lang learning. "Black Sounds Matter" and so do "American Tongues".

Jeff Allen MT Expert

"Language data distribution agreements for Haitian Creole language content providers which can provide some long-term, sustainable distribution channels that will help the Haitian diaspora for all the work they have done over decades for their language and their people. Many people told me 10 years ago that there was not market for language technologies and software for Haitian Creole and other Creole languages, that they were too small a market, just another "minority language". And I spent years showing the contrary yet, the dotcom crash and 911 hurt all efforts to pursue a dedicated action in this area. And these are now exciting moments to show that Haitian Creole really is a "language" that is valued, and there are ways to help, and lives to save." Haiti requires the immediate availability of textual data and speech data ASAP for academic, industrial research and commercial language technology groups to assemble different types of systems. This is my contribution to Haiti Disaster Relief. I can bring together the owners of HC language data with the appropriate official distributors of such data for Natural Language processing tools, and with those who develop the tools. The language technology developers need data, and we all know that many people who have HC data are scared of their electronic data being copied and pirated. We can be very innovative. And I know who to discuss with. Both of my cell phones are on 24/7 right now.
Spread the word and tell your colleagues and friends to contact me. And we can quickly make arrangements for their electronic data to be channeled through a reputable long-established language data distribution center. There are ways to channel this correctly with sustainable licensing agreements. And there are ways to make special offers specifically for Haiti Disaster Relief actions. ~ Jeff Allen MT Expert

Shelved Machine Translator Gets New Life in Haiti Relief Effort
Medical dictionary springs from largely forgotten English/Creole database. A largely forgotten translator is getting new life in the aftermath of the devastating January 12 earthquake in Haiti which left as many as 200,000 people dead and 1.5 million homeless.
Linguists and computer scientists are among the rapid responders to the disaster site. Among them is former Carnegie Mellon University linguist Jeff Allen who went to Haiti in 1990s on U.S. Army contract.

Multilingual Translation System
All citizens, regardless of native tongue, shall have the same access to knowledge on the Internet.

Indiana University Creole Institute
Now available: FREE Sample of Ann Pale Kreyol, the best-selling textbook for English-speaking learners of Haitian Creole. To download sample pages in PDF format, click here. To download the accompanying audio files in MP3 format, click here. To order Ann Pale Kreyol materials, scroll down. Please inquire by phone or by e-mail about special discounts for people going to Haiti to assist in relief and recovery efforts.

Real-time, mobile phone SMS text message translation project
This is a service for issuing SMS text messages for emergency services. Messages are waiting in the queue to be translated and need more help.


There are various other efforts like Translators Without Borders which serves NGOs including Doctors without Borders who are currently serving the Haitian population in Haiti, volunteers help translation needs, and are setting up a collaborative platform on the internet to better handle the overall translator qualification process, and the processing of the translation requests. Translators Without Borders has been set up for several years by a very reputable translation company owner (who has been running the same translation company for 20+ years here in Paris). There is also a group of 100,000 translators for Haiti on Facebook.

HaitiAN Experts

LTI CMU Haitian Creole project The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science (CMU SCS) is making publicly available the Haitian Creole spoken and text data that we have been collected.

Translators without Boarders
Emergency Haitian Creole Translation Help Needed

Real time Search #Haiti

Creole linguistics

HAITIAN CREOLE

French Creole

  • A Dual Approach to French Creole Genesis
    by Mikael Parkvall M. A. Thesis, presented in April 1995 at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University. French-lexicon creoles of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean (minus Réunionnais) were the result not of one, and not of several, but of two geneses, one on St. Kitts and one in Senegal.The varieties presently spoken on the Lesser Antilles would be descended from the former, and those spoken in the Indian Ocean and in Louisiana would be derived from the latter. I suggested that Haitian and Guianese would be of the Kittitian type, but with certain influences from the Senegalese proto-pidgin.
  • Creole - Kreyol Alphabet Alphabè Kreyòl la The Kreyol Alphabet