Supporting Sámi languages in digital services

Following the guidelines given in UNESCO’s proclamation of an International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022–2032), the National Library of Finland (NatLibFI) has launched a project to improve support for Northern Sámi in its digital services Finna, Finto and Kotoistus. The initiative will last two years, from 2022 to 2023.

The project promotes access to resources in Northern Sámi while supporting the linguistic rights and equality of the Sámi languages. At the core of the project are the permanent national infrastructures maintained by NatLibFi: 1) the search service Finna, 2) the terminology and ontology service Finto, and 3) Kotoistus, a service promoting the use of ICT products and services in the native language of the user. The project will start with Northern Sámi, the most commonly spoken Sámi language in Finland and the one with the most resources available. As Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland, digital infrastructures in NatLibFi are maintained mainly for these two languages. To serve international audiences, there is also support for English. Up until now, there has been no support for the three Sámi languages used in Finland despite their status as official regional languages. This ongoing initiative seeks to improve the situation, first with Northern Sámi, and hopefully in years to come, also with Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi.

The overall aim of the project is to extend the national information services to cover the linguistic diversity that exists in Finland, as these services are also widely used in Sámi communities. Creating high-quality service in new languages is a demanding task, and in the context of indigenous, endangered and minority languages such as Sámi, may differ in many ways from similar work with widely supported official languages.

This emphasizes the need for planning, collaboration and open discussion before and during the project with experts in the Sámi languages and cultures: the Sámi Parliament of Finland, the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida, the libraries in the Sámi area of Finland, the Giellagas Institute for Sámi Studies, the language authority Sámi Giellagáldu, and UiT – The Arctic University of Norway.

The work will have wide-ranging cultural consequences. First, it will increase the support for an endangered language and thereby also the domains where the language can be used. Secondly, it also has implications for the users of these services in Finnish, Swedish and English, as the descriptions of the Sámi resources become more correct and clearly defined by the Sámi organizations themselves.

All organizations, including museums, libraries and language communities, can use the results of the project to generate keywords or in their terminology work, also in the Sámi languages.

In the future, the aforementioned services (Finna, Finto, Kotoistuspalvelu) will provide persistent support for the Sámi languages through relevant cooperation networks. The work we have initiated represents both a challenge and an opportunity, and wider communication about the tasks plays an essential role in itself.