Data Based Translations / Re-Playing Memories

March 3, 2015CGC 2016 Conference

Play / RewindRiver Building, Carleton University

WOOD QUAY VENUE, DUBLIN, 24 APRIL 2015

Dr Tracey P. LauriaultCommunication StudiesSchool of Journalism and [email protected]@TraceyLauriault

Data Based Translations / Re-Playing Memories

PLACE NAMES

Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, Communication Studies, Carleton University

PLACE NAMES‘‘storytelling organization or a

collective storytelling system in which the performance of stories is a key part

of members’ sense making and a means to allow them to supplement

individual memories with institutional memory”

“label, define, and represent places and people; ‘a place name sometimes fills

up its territory with sense of place and homogenizes it”.

Kim, Y.-C. & Ball-Rokeach, 2006, Civic Engagement From a Communication Infrastructure

Perspective, p.180.

Mayhew, 2015, Place Name, Oxford Dictionary of Geography.


INFRASTRUCTURAL SCRIPTS

“the experience of space is the experience of multiple infrastructures –

infrastructures of naming, of movement, of interaction, etc. – and

these infrastructures emerge from and are sustained by the embodied

practices of the people who populate and inhabit the spaces in question”.

Dourish & Bell, 2007, The Infrastructure of Experience and the Experience of

Infrastructure p. 424


NEW SCRIPT “A frequent result of an old order

yielding to a new, whether painfully or painlessly, is a change of another

kind…the renaming of places” and a “broad principle holds, that the more turbulent the history of a country, the

more numerous are its renamings”Room, 1993, Place-Name Changes 1900-1991, p. vii


COLONIALIZATIONSpecial instructions, concerning the treatment of Placenames, issued by the officer in charge of the survey Lt. Col. Thomas Colby (1829?) “The persons employed on the survey are to endeavour to obtain the correct orthography of the names of places diligently consulting the best authorities within their reach.

The name of each place is to be inserted as it is commonly spelt, in the first column of the name book; and the various modes of spelling it used in books, writings &c., are to be inserted in the second column, with the authority placed in the third column opposite to each.

The situation of the place is to be recorded in a popular manner in the fourth column of the namebook.

A short description of the place and any other remarkable circumstances relating to it are to be inserted.

This data was recorded in Namebooks which are now stored in the National Archive.”

http://www.osi.ie/education/third-level-and-academic/history-of-place-names/

LOGAINM


TRANSLATIONS

Set in Baile Beag, County Donegal, in 1833

Turbulent times in the British Colony.

The British want to map the island and translate Gaelic place names into ‘proper’ standardized English.

Brian Friel, 1981, Translations: A Play, London: Faber & Faber


POST-COLONIAL RECLAIMINGThe post office always resisted the new namesAfter the 1916 uprising scientists produced a list of toponyms in Irish versions

As an act of independence new official authorities were reclaiming Irishness

1946 a toponymic committee was struck to investigate how to restore anglicized place names into Irish form

1968 the original Irish names stated to get put onto the map

1983 the Ordnance Survey policy was directed toward the creation of bilingual maps, with original Irish place names and if the English names did not have an Irish equivalent these were translated

Ormeling, 1983, Minority Toponyms on Maps


POST-COLONIAL AUTHORITY


CODED TRANSLATIONS

http://apps.dri.ie/locationLODer/docs/

linked_logainm_narrative_report_en.pdf

http://apps.dri.ie/locationLODer/docs/

using_linked_logainm_en.pdf


MAPPING

http://www.logainm.ie


LOCATION LODER logainm.ie DBpedia

The data held in Wikipedia’s infoboxes are made available as Linked Open Data via DBpedia.org.

Irish Historic Town Atlas Established in 1981 aims to record the

topographical development of a selection of Irish towns both large and small. This dataset tracks changes to streets and street names in Dublin over time, and includes bibliographic references to original sources where present.

National Library of Ireland Longfield map collection consists of 1,671

individual maps bound into twenty-eight volumes. The maps represent all counties in Ireland with the exception of Kerry.

Europeana.eu is an internet portal which acts as a hub for

digitized cultural content across Europe. Content on Europeana includes digitised artworks, books, archival documents, film and audio.

http://apps.dri.ie/locationLODer/


JOHN O'DONOVAN, GLOSSARY, IRISH TOPOG[RAPHICAL] DICT[IONARY] MANUSCRIPT 1830-1832

“A glossary in alphabetical order of various Anglicised placename elements, followed by their Irish forms and a translation.

‘Derivation of all the names of places in Lanigan’s Ecclesiastical History of Ireland [four volumes, 1822] as given by himself, by Vallancey and others with remarks by J. O’Donovan. December 23, 1830’.

‘A list of Irish words that enter into the composition of many names of places in Ireland’. The Irish words are followed by a translation and generally by relevant examples from placenames. Some personal names and surnames are also included.

‘A list of saints’ names to whom Irish church[es] were dedicated’. This short list is on the final verso page and includes toponymic examples of the saints’ names.”

http://www.logainm.ie/en/res/179

John O'Donovan, Ordnance Survey


BIOGRAPHIES

National Database of Irish Biographies with publishers Cló Iar-Chonnacht. This features more than 1,700 people since the year 1560

who have had an involvement with the Irish language. There is an alphabetical listing as well as comprehensive cross-referencing, full-text search for keywords and phrases, timelines, and life attributes such as

works, awards and eventshttp://www.ainm.ie/

.


TERMINOLOGY

National Terminology Database with Foras na Gaeilge. This is a 200,000+ listing of Irish-language terms in specialised and

contemporary subjects.http://www.tearma.ie/


FOLKLORE

The objective is to initiate the digitization of the National Folklore Collection (NFC) so that, by 2016:(i) the public will have access to

material from the Collection on the public website (ii) a data

management system will be available for NFC to which other material can be added in future.

http://www.duchas.ie/en


AUDIO RECORDINGS

+1,200 hours of recordings made in the 1960s and 1970s in 24 counties and placenames were collected from more than 4,000. The audio material

and its catalogue were digitized in 2009 & the database was created in Fiontar as part of an MA Research Fellowship undertaken by Cáit Nic

Fhionnlaoich, 2010–2011, sponsored by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

http://www.logainm.ie/phono/

LOCAL & TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE


LAKE HURON TREATY RELATIONSHIP PROCESS


INUIT SIKU (SEA ICE) ATLAS


PLACE NAME ATLASES

Photos © 2012 Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute



COLLECTIVE MEMORY PROJECTS These atlases embody the collective memories of those who have contributed to their creation

and have become a means to records the historical, geographical, cultural and scientific

facts that have been transmitted orally for centuries.

These atlases are the first official recordings of this aurally transmitted knowledge and elders

and communities have authoritatively endorsed each record. The communities who have

contributed to and authorized them regard these atlases as living archives.

REPLAYING

We are continuously translating. The land and the people dynamically change, so do the

socio-technological data assemblages, from Gaelic to English in the colonial Survey, back into Gaelic in the post-colonial Linked Logainm Project, the territory is then translated from the colonial cartographic maps

into a post-colonial real-world object database. Local and traditional knowledge once transmitted orally, in song and stories, are translated into digital

multimedia artefacts accessible to youth and embedded into curricula into local languages. These

become geospatial data, maps and atlases that become a fundamental source in our memory of the world.

They form part of our collective memory system, they help us understand our geo-narratives, they counter

colonial mappings, are the result of scientific endeavours, represent multiple worldviews, and they

inform decisions.

The interconnections increase. In each case, the translation technologically

mediates places and culture, with each iteration it remains infrastructure, one that increasingly finds

itself interconnected with others. Databases are augmenting meaning.

Our job is to build better systems, but more critical, reflexive, sensitive and nuanced ones, always

thinking of the meaning we are inscribing, cognitive of the material and cultural affect on the world.

Data Based Translations / Re-Playing Memories

Data & Analytics

Data Based Translations / Re-Playing Memories