Language revival - the collection as a living language resource

Some of the languages a collection holds are heritage or endangered languages - living languages that belong to the communities who speak them. The language-revival corpus turns the collection into a read-only resource for a chosen language: it gathers the records described in it, the place-names and subject terms that carry a label in it, any transcriptions, and a community-built glossary. This is part of the North Star "a culture you can talk to - corpus-grounded history and language revival".

Respectful, jurisdiction-neutral framing

A heritage language is living and owned by its community of speakers. This surface gathers what the collection holds in or about a language as a resource for speakers, learners and researchers. It does not claim authority over the language itself, and it never machine-translates a whole language into the catalogue. The community glossary is contributed by people and reviewed before it appears - a shared starting point, not a definitive dictionary.

The public pages

• Language directory (/language-corpus) - every language the collection holds, with how many published records are described in it and how many terms carry a label in it. Richest first; Afrikaans is ordered immediately before Dutch.
• A language page (/language-corpus/{culture}, e.g. /language-corpus/af) - for one language, read-only:
  • Records described in it - published holdings whose description is written in the language, each linking to its record.
  • Words from the collection - place-names and subject terms that carry a label in the language (a starting word-list, not a definitive vocabulary).
  • Transcriptions and full text - published full-text passages in the language.
  • Community glossary - approved words and meanings contributed by the community.

Only published records (publication status, type 158, status 160; the catalogue root is never shown) appear publicly.

Optional machine translation

Each transcription offers an optional, on-demand machine translation to English. The translation runs through the AHG AI gateway (never a direct model node) and is always labelled:

Machine translation via the AHG gateway - not an official or authoritative translation.

If translation is unavailable or disabled, the original text is left intact with a clear note. Heritage and SA languages are never bulk machine-translated into the catalogue - this is read-only, on-demand assistance only.

Contributing to the glossary

Anyone can add a word in a language and its meaning from the language page. A contribution lands as pending and is not shown publicly until a reviewer approves it.

Moderating the glossary (admin)

1. Go to Glossary moderation (/language-corpus-admin/glossary).
2. Filter by status (pending / approved / not published).
3. Approve an entry to publish it on the language page, or Reject to hide it.

What gets written

The only table this feature writes to is the additive language_revival_glossary. Everything else is read read-only from the existing catalogue - no existing table is written or altered.