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Integrated Digital Sorbian Studies

The third-party funded project, which is running from 2022 until approximately 2027, is being carried out jointly with the TU Dresden (Prof. Dr. Christian Prunitsch, Slavic Studies and Prof. Dr. Alexander Lasch, German Studies). It combines a strategic framework, the embedding of Sorbian Studies (a) in larger subjects (Slavic Studies, German Studies) and (b) in overarching developments in the humanities (emergence of the Digital Humanities) with concrete individual projects. The results of these should also serve the above-mentioned embedding or strengthen interest in the “small subject” of Sorbian Studies in any other way.

The project is funded under the program “Global knowledge. Structural strengthening of small subjects” with approx. 990 thousand euros from the Volkswagen Foundation. In combination with the TUD’s and SI’s own contributions, the total financial volume amounts to approximately 1.6 million euros.

Sub-projects at the Sorbian Institute:

The project comprises the full-text extraction (on a TEI basis) from the newspapers Nowa Doba (1947-1990) and Serbske Nowiny (2007-2016). The 60 annual volumes comprise approx. 85,000 pages which are to be text-extracted. An automated workflow is used, which includes several steps from image scanning (available in large part) to the final structured full text. Among other things, there is automatic segment recognition, manual post-correction of the text flow, automated OCR and semi-automated post-OCR, as well as automated transfer into the TEI-XML format. Tools from the DFG-funded OCR-D project are used. The OCR is based on LSTM training models for Upper Sorbian (which are iteratively generated on the basis of Upper Sorbian ground truth texts available and generated in the project). The generated texts are finally added to the Upper Sorbian text corpus.

Sub-projects at the TU Dresden:

  • Sorbian curriculum at the TU Dresden:

Young academics are urgently needed to strengthen the small subject of Sorbian Studies. For this reason, it is necessary to establish a track that is easily identifiable from the outside and provides meaningful study opportunities in the existing course structures of the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies as well as the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The basis are Sorbian language courses from level A1, which are deliberately designed and offered both for students of Slavic Studies and for other interested parties, for example from the Sorbian Institute. For this purpose, the self-learning app Sorbian Online Learning (Sorbisch Online Lernen), which was co-developed at the TU Dresden, as well as modern media learning materials for adult education are developed and used. Flexible module descriptions are to ensure the openness of the Sorbian track in formal terms as well. The existing material will be further developed in the direction of (Slavic) language comparison and learner feedback. In addition, there are subject-specific courses offered by the Chair of Western Slavic Literatures and Cultural Studies, the Chair of Sorbian Studies, the Chair of Linguistics and History of Slavic Languages. In the development of the Sorbian curriculum, cooperative relationships with the Institute of History, the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore, and in particular with the Sorbian Institute are being deepened in teaching, in addition to the subject-related interconnection with German Studies. Aspects of virtual teaching at the TU Dresden are being taken up and expanded. Progress in the further measures within the framework of IDSS can be directly integrated into the stabilisation of the curriculum.

  • Digital Kito Lorenc (in preparation, from 2025)
  • Production of a German sub-corpus for a comparative discourse analysis
  • Comparative corpus linguistic discourse analysis (in preparation, from 2024)

Contact persons: Prof. Dr. Hauke Bartels, Prof. Dr. Christian Prunitsch (TUD), Prof. Dr. Alexander Lasch (TUD)

Cooperation partner: TU Dresden

Joint media statement of the TU Dresden and the Sorbian Institute of 21 March 2022 on the occasion of the project approval.



Logo von Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/de