On the 5th of October specialists of the Interregional laboratory of information support for functioning of Finno-Ugric languages of the Innovative Language Technologies Center of KRASSaM* held a training seminar «the Use of the Komi language in the Internet and computer technology». School teachers professors and students of the Komi and other Finno-Ugric languages department of the State Syktyvkar Univercity.

The seminar was held by the head of the Laboratory and a candidate of philological sciences Marina Fedina and specialists Andrey Chemyshev and Vyacheslav Stepanov. A. Chemyshev presented websites Komikyv.ru and FU-Lab.ru created by them, which contain all information necessary for a successful use of the Komi language on a computer.

Listeners of the seminar were told about keyboard layouts for the Komi language, they were also presented the Russian-Komi and Komi-Russian electronic dictionaries and a system for checking the spelling of the Komi language (morphoanalizer or so-called spell checker), a corpora-manager for the analysis of Komi texts and program for recognition of them (OCR). A converter for texts with non-standard encoding was also demonstrated – using it you can fix the texts in the Komi language so that specific letters of the Komi alphabet will have the correct encoding and will be reflected adequately in computer programs.

“The Academy has become a home not only for government employees; it is nice and interesting that a lot of senior students and even teachers appeared among our course attendees”, - said the Vice-rector on scientific work of the KRASSaM Vyacheslav Antonov, who also visited the seminar. – “The Academy constantly goes beyond the range of training programs for civil servants”.

According to him, the KRASSaM acquired a solid computer software: there is a Wi-Fi Internet connection all over the main building of the Academy. A unified information network for staff and students with the possibility of remote contact was also created, as well as an IP-telephony which allows to hold discussions and conference without taking employees from the workplace.

“But at the same time another question arises: we live in the Komi Republic and one of the main tasks for today is the preservation and development of the Komi language and Komi culture. But the development of language is impossible without using it in the Internet environment and the electronic media... It would be Logical if this form of education existed in the Komi language, the native one. And when it exists only in common language it leads only to extinction of the mother tongue. The objective of this seminar is to make these things understandable and to make the language exist in electronic form, but for that relevant developments are needed. Here, in the Academy we are trying to solve this problem by ourselves. The Academy will become a place where you can get help and support, it will be a basis for the directions important for the development of the Komi language. There’s a great hope that this way will eventually lead to the creation of multilingual environment, and it will be possible to learn two or even three languages at school in full measure – the native one, the national and the international language of communication. And for that the native language must have a developed scientific and public terminology” – said the Vice-rector.