The Endangered Languages Project provides a place online for research, documents, and even
recordings of people speaking endangered languages. You can read
more here about this incredibly cool and human use of the web.
While we're working on preserving languages, it's also important to create bridges between
languages, as Google Translate does. A group of students at the University of Houston recently
worked on a device that aims to
translate between sign language and spoken English. The team created a prototype
that reads sign language and outputs audible words, then reverses the process by listening for
spoken words and showing sign language on a display.
Each week we publish Fridaygram, featuring cool things from Google and elsewhere
that you might have missed during the week. Fridaygram items aren't necessarily related to
developer topics; they're just interesting to us nerds. Speaking of languages, do you think
COBOL should be preserved?
By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog
Editor