The Next Steps

Over the past few years, we annotated a vocabulary list with proverbs, poetry and prose. We trained a translation model to translate between Sicilian, English and Italian. And now we have a dictionary for the 21st century.

But it's a small dictionary, not a big one.

I'd like to develop a better one, but I'm an economist, not a linguist. So I just did what an economist would do: I assembled a dataset. I hope it fills the need for an online dictionary until we can create a better one.

Most readers of this page will not be linguists either. Some might not even know Sicilian. But if they want to develop a Sicilian dictionary, then I want their help.

At Napizia Magazine, we're creating a cultural periodical of translations. We collecting "unencumbered articles" (e.g. from public domain or from Creative Commons), we translate them (with the help of our translator) and we publish them.

Even someone without any knowledge of Sicilian at all can suggest an article. And together we'll begin to translate. Translating will give people from Southern Italy an opportunity to write (or re-write) their own history. And it will give them an opportunity to write and develop their language.

Writing in Sicilian develops the language and it develops text for language modeling, which can then be used to write more in Sicilian. It's a virtuous cycle. The more we write in Sicilian, the easier it becomes to write in Sicilian.

If you would like to write more in Sicilian, then I would love to hear from you. Send me an email at: eryk@napizia.com and let's find ways for you to get involved.