Announcements & News

Dear Colleague,

Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language has the honour of inviting you to the 20th Annual Conference of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL) which will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia on 11th, 12th and 13th October 2023.

The theme of the conference is: By the People, for the People: Online Dictionaries, Language Portals, and the Role of Language Users.

The conference will take place in the Atrij ZRC hall, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana. Hotel rooms in Hotel Slon (Slovenska cesta 30, Ljubljana) will be booked for invited speakers, two delegates from each member country and for one delegate from each associate member institution. Please, let us know as soon as possible, if you wish to register speakers or other persons who are not delegates, at your own expense.

On Wednesday evening, 11 October, there will be a gala event on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of EFNIL and the Škrabec Foundation with a welcome buffet; the conference dinner will be served on Thursday evening, 12 October.

The 20th EFNIL Conference will take place over two and a half days. The General Assembly will take place on Wednesday, 11 October, at 15:00. The Conference will be held on 12 October (morning and afternoon sessions) and 13 October (morning session). We ask all delegation members to plan their attendance and arrange their flights in such a way that they can attend the General Assembly. You can plan a flight to and from Ljubljana airport. If a direct flight from your country to Ljubljana is not available, you can also fly to Trieste (1 hour), Zagreb (1 hour 30 minutes), Graz or Venice and use GoOpti‘s affordable transportation. All information about the conference will be available on this website.

Please find the preliminary program here.

The costs of the conference materials, accommodation for two nights, lunch and dinner will be covered by EFNIL.

We kindly ask that you confirm your participation by filling out the online registration form (https://forms.gle/vDuNAezYvfDDxTaq8) by 30 June 2023. Please, note that online participation is not possible.

We look forward to seeing you in Ljubljana in October!

Best regards,

Sabine Kirchmeier
President of EFNIL

Kozma Ahačič
Head of the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language ZRC SAZU

October 11th–13th, 2023, Ljubljana, Slovenia

General theme

By the People, for the People: Online Dictionaries, Language Portals, and the Role of Language Users

The European Federation of National Institutions for Language and ZRC SAZU (Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language) will host the two-day conference By the People, for the People: Online Dictionaries, Language Portals, and the Role of Language Users. The conference will take place from October 11th to 13th, 2023, and will be held as a live event only. Presentations will be recorded and will be available online after the conference.

Rationale

The conference will focus on the role of language users in the preparation of modern dictionaries, manuals, language portals, and language infrastructure in general. We plan to address the following subtopics:

• The language user and modern media

What has changed in linguists’ work and in language users’ needs and practices during the past 20 years? What are the challenges of modern media that national language institutions face? How can we take advantage of all the possibilities that the new media offer? How do the media help create our language, and how do general and specialized language users shape it through the media?

• Different types of language users and their needs

How is knowledge and information about language conveyed to different types of users, and how can we monitor and include language practices and needs in online language portals and language manuals? How do we cater for different groups of language users and their needs, e.g., younger and older persons, groups with special challenges, for instance impediment of hearing, vision, or cognition, minority and regional language users and second-language users. How do we address issues regarding gender-neutral language?

• Language manuals and modern media

What do we have, what do we need, and what could we have? For example, specialized language portals, normative guides, or language advisory services (responses provided by language institutions).

• Online dictionaries, language descriptions, language portals, and language infrastructure for (modern) language users

How could specialized language portals, normative guides, and other language services be designed to meet the needs of language users? Could language users’ responses and practices serve as research corpora of the future (e.g., user-created descriptions and dictionaries, users’ language-related questions)? How should language policies and linguists guide this process? How has lexicographic work adapted to take language users’ needs into account?

• Roundtable: The role of language portals in language policy and language planning

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For each of these topics focusing on language portals, language manuals, and the role of language users in the era of new media, we welcome submissions that present national reports, research results, best practices, ongoing projects and project results, policies, strategies, action plans, guidelines, and so on.

The conference will be held in the form of work sessions, with presentations and discussions. The keynote speakers will present some of the most recent and prominent endeavours in their fields, and they will provide various approaches with regard to the main topic. The program will end with a panel session in which all keynote speakers and participants will discuss the most prominent issues and conclusions from the thematic sessions.

The conference and the EFNIL General Assembly will take place in the room ZRC Atrium at ZRC SAZU (Novi trg 4, Ljubljana). Participants will stay at the Hotel Slon (Slovenska cesta 34, Ljubljana). A cultural program, followed by a reception, will be held at the Cankar Center (Prešernova cesta 10, Ljubljana). Special attention will be devoted to EFNIL twentieth anniversary.

Call for proposals: Suggestions for speakers and keynotes

We invite our member institutions to consider offering a national report or a presentation related to one of the topics mentioned above. Ideally, a national report will give a brief overview of past and current achievements, and address some of the future challenges within each of the main topics.

Please send a (preliminary) title with a brief explanatory note (up to 400 words) by email to the EFNIL Secretariat (efnil@nytud.hu), with copies to Sabine Kirchmeier (sabine@kirchmeier.dk) and Kozma Ahačič (kozma.ahacic@zrc-sazu.si).

In addition, we invite members to submit suggestions for speakers and keynotes. If you know experts in your country in one or more of the fields described above, please let us know as soon as possible. We will take your suggestions into account and contact the persons suggested. For all speaker suggestions, please describe the topic and the nature of the presentation that can be expected.

We would be grateful if we could receive your submissions for national reports or keynote speakers no later than March 1st, 2023. You will be notified by April 1st, 2023, whether your proposal has been accepted by the program committee.

All information about the conference will be available on the EFNIL website (www.efnil.org) and on our host’s website: https://efnil.zrc-sazu.si.

We look forward to your contributions!

With best wishes and on behalf of EFNIL’s executive committee and the local organizers,

Sabine Kirchmeier, President of EFNIL                                                    

Kozma Ahačič, Head of the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language ZRC SAZU