NELPB

Network of European Language and Planning Boards

During the past 20 years, many regional democratic institutions have established Language Boards or similar organisations with a statutory role to promote minority languages. It became apparent at the beginning of the 21st century that there would be considerable benefits if these organisations were to work together.

The European Network of Language Planning Boards was set up in October 2001 to promote regional and minority languages (RMLs) on a European level. This project will enable the Network to focus upon specific issues that affect RMLs across Europe and promote opportunities to hear and see languages and cultures, thereby underpinning the drive to improve language awareness, enhance learning opportunities and develop and support best practice in all aspects of language planning.

The work of the Network enables it to prepare the ground for the implementation of the Action Plan on Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity, by creating a language-friendly environment in RML communities across Europe.

Best practices will be developed and shared in the following four priority domains:

• Language Transmission. This is the cornerstone of the promotion of bilingualism in the RML context, in which the family plays a crucial role.
• Information Technology. The Network will endeavour to gather experience from wider language communities in the fields of machine translation and translation memory software, terminology management, multilingual document management and workflow systems, speech synthesis and recognition, localisation processes, integration of legacy translations into translation memory systems, standardisation of technology and, especially, ways in which IT can be used to provide minority language learning opportunities and help to create new speakers.
• Immersion and Trilingual Education. The school system is often heavily depended upon to create new speakers of RMLs, but, more often than not, the only entry point to this immersion system is at a very early age, typically 3 or 5 years old. The project will gather experiences of multiple entry points to immersion education (e.g. 7 and 11 years old) and disseminate relevant good practices.
• Marketing. The principle of developing and sharing good practice will also be applied to the varying expertise and materials developed by the individual language planning boards in the field of marketing.

Four websites will be set up during the lifetime of the project corresponding to each of the above four priority domains and will contain all the information gathered during the project. These will also serve to strengthen contacts within the language planning community and will be regularly updated with new information as the Network matures.

A conference will take place in Cardiff in October 2005 to present the findings of the project and to discuss and disseminate relevant information.