Building Digital and Print Dictionaries for the Thangmi Language
The Thangmi dictionary represents more than three decades of community‑driven linguistic work, with thousands of entries gathered, refined, and maintained by Thangmi speakers and language workers. Revitalization Technology was brought in to help the team transform this rich legacy into two modern, sustainable resources: a mobile‑friendly digital dictionary and a professionally designed print dictionary that highlights the language’s dialectal depth.
Our work focused on several interconnected areas:
Evaluating Digital Dictionary Platforms
The community needed a digital solution that worked reliably on mobile devices, even with intermittent internet access. We conducted a comparative review of available dictionary platforms, prioritizing tools that supported offline or low‑connectivity use, ongoing updates, and audio integration. This ensured the final choice aligned with both the community’s technical realities and their long‑term goals.
Unicode Normalization and Devanagari Font Stability
Because the dictionary includes extensive Devanagari content, we performed a full audit of the data’s Unicode normalization. We resolved inconsistencies in combining characters, standardized codepoints across the dataset, and ensured that the chosen fonts rendered cleanly and consistently across browsers, devices, and operating systems. This work eliminated display issues that could have caused search failures, sorting errors, or visual inconsistencies in the final dictionaries.
Collaborating With Developers to Add Needed Features
After identifying the most promising platform, we worked directly with its development team to advocate for features essential to Thangmi users. This included improvements to audio handling and entry structure. These features were added specifically in response to the community’s needs, strengthening the platform for future users as well.
Designing an Audio Workflow and Training Editors
Audio was a core priority for the community, language workers were busy recording audio in every dialect, resulting in thousands of audio files that needed to be edited and uploaded. We onboarded a team of audio editors, guided them through best practices, and helped them document their process so future editors could easily continue the work. This resulted in more than 12,000 audio files attached to dictionary entries.
Developing a Print Dictionary Layout That Honors Dialectal Richness
For the print edition, we created a layout that foregrounds the dialectal variation within Thangmi. The design allows readers to see relationships across dialects while maintaining clarity and usability. We also built a production workflow that let community editors continue updating the language data while we regenerated the print‑ready dictionary with a single command.
Delivering Two Sustainable, Community‑Owned Dictionaries
The final outcome is a pair of robust, future‑proof resources:
A digital dictionary optimized for mobile access, ongoing updates, and rich audio support.
A print dictionary with a clean, dialect‑centered layout and a streamlined update pipeline.
Together, these resources contain 7,000+ entries and 12,000+ audio files, reflecting decades of community knowledge and a digital infrastructure that will support Thangmi language work for years to come.
