Community Success Stories
Thanks to the availability of a digital keyboard in their language, Indigenous communities are able to access digital information, document their language with all its nuances, share personal and collective stories, and preserve the cultures and histories of their communities. See how each community below has been impacted by the creation of a keyboard.
In their own words
Hear from Our Global Community About Our Keyboards!
The Sunuwar language has always been the heart of our family conversations. While spoken word flows easily, expressing ourselves through writing in Devanagari script (Khas-Nepali) felt like a constant struggle. The script couldn’t capture the nuances and tones of Sunuwar, often distorting the true meaning of our messages. This was especially difficult when communicating with family in remote villages, where phone calls were a luxury. The introduction of the Sunuwar keyboard has been a game-changer. I can finally write in my native language, expressing my feelings perfectly. The keyboard’s compatibility with the familiar Roman layout makes it easy to use, and including tone signs allows for an accurate representation of our spoken language….We, the Sunuwar Indigenous community, are incredibly grateful to the Translation Commons team for connecting us with like-minded individuals such as Craig, Debbie, Neil and Patel among others, who are passionate about preserving and promoting the Sunuwar language….During the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, our story serves as a testament to the power of revitalization.
Dev Kumar SunuwarIndigenous Media FoundationSunuwar keyboardMany thanks to Dr. Craig Cornelius and the Translation Commons keyboard team for taking on this great initiative [creating the Chakma virtual keyboard]. Our Chakma community is using it and we have found there are many benefits for those who practice the Chakma language regularly. It is proving to be an excellent input device for writing the Chakma language. We can now enter the digital world! We think this will encourage other communities to have digital keyboards developed for their languages.
Bivuti ChakmaChakma keyboard…the Translation Commons Keyboard represents a vast improvement over the previous web-based keyboard. Its efficiency and reliability were instrumental in my recent achievement: completing the first publication utilizing Mende in the Kikaku script, titled “The Art of the Mende.” This milestone marks a pivotal moment for me, made possible solely through the user-friendly design of the Translation Commons Kikaku Keyboard by Dr. Cornelius….I am excited to embark on the next phase of our linguistic journey: creating the first Mende dictionary in Kikaku, with an estimated entry of at least 250 thousand words. The significance of this endeavor cannot be overstated, as the Mende language, a script language based on ideograms, spoken by nearly 3 million people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, enriches our understanding of language, culture, history, and technology.
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Keyboard creation is a free, collaborative service for Indigenous and underrepresented languages.