Endangered Sound Archives and Minority Languages in the Russian Federation

Victor Denisov and Tjeerd de Graaf

Phonogram Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation

Introduction

In Russia many old sound recordings still remain hidden in sound archives and in private possession where the quality of preservation is not guaranteed. This review presents the result of some earlier projects related to these historical recordings and describes the present project on Safeguarding and Preservation of Sound Materials of Endangered Languages for Sound Archives in Russia. There we propose to make part of these recordings available and to add them to the database developed in St.Petersburg. The aim of the project is to re-record the material in a storage facility which will modernise the possible archiving activities in the Russian Federation and bring them up-to date with the present day world standards. In the project we are concentrating on a selection of recordings, especially those of some endangered Siberian languages. We also give recommendations how to modernise the available facilities in the Russian Federation by joining the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives and acting according to its standards, recommended practices and strategies.

1. Historical data in sound archives and related research projects

In the last half of the 19th century a great invention was made by Thomas Edison which would change the possibility of doing linguistic research drastically (De Graaf 1997, 2002b). This was the phonograph which since 1880 was used for recording sounds. For the first time in human history people were able to store and rehear acoustic data, in particular speech, and to reproduce it onto other sound carriers. It was not long after this invention that ethnologists, folklorists, linguists, composers, and amateurs began to utilise the new machine to collect information on the oral data and music of cultural groups at home and abroad.

Prior to 1890, during linguistic fieldwork, notes were taken by hand during sessions with informants and this was a laborious process for both the investigator and the informants. The phonograph changed all this and with the new method linguists and musicologists were able to make records instantaneously and to obtain an accurate and objective record of a single performance. Now it was possible to capture the nuances and subtleties of the spoken word and duplicates could be played repeatedly for transcription and analysis, whereas the original recordings could be preserved for future use. When recordings were made, it became obvious that a central facility was needed for the preservation of the valuable data which had been collected. At the beginning of the 20th century this led to the establishment of sound archives, the earliest of which in Europe were located in Vienna, Berlin and St.Petersburg. The sound archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Museum of Russian Literature (the Pushkinsky Dom) in St.Petersburg contains about 10,000 wax cylinders of the Edison phonograph and more than 500 old wax discs. In addition, an extensive fund of gramophone records exists and one of the largest collections of tape-recordings of Russian folklore. These represent the history of Russian ethnography and contain a wide range of materials (De Graaf 2001, 2002a). Many of these recordings form one of the basic collections used in our joint projects with St.Petersburg. The first of these projects on the Use of Acoustic Data Bases and the Study of Language Change (1995-1998) has been financially supported by the organization INTAS of the European Union in Brussels.

We were able to reconstruct some of the many recordings in the Pushkinsky Dom and to make them available for further research, which is not only important for historical and cultural reasons, but also for language description and for the study of possible direct evidence of language change. In a second INTAS project, St.Petersburg Sound Archives on the World Wide Web (1998 - 2001) part of the sound recordings have been placed on the internet and are now available on a special web site for further study (De Graaf 2004). For both projects, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences was partner and responsible for the technical aspects. For these projects we first completed the reconstruction of the sound archive material of the Zhirmunsky collection. Zhirmunsky was a famous linguist who worked in St.Petersburg/Leningrad in the early years of the 20th century. One of his main interests was the study of German dialects spoken in Russia. In the period between 1927 and 1930 he recorded many utterances, in particular songs by German settlers, on waxed cardboard discs, which were transferred in the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv. Within the framework of the INTAS project, this collection has been copied onto tape and part of the material is now stored in a special database. A related study has been made on the language of the Siberian Mennonites (De Graaf 2005).

For our third INTAS Project on The construction of a full-text database on Balto-Finnic languages and Russian dialects in Northwest-Russia (2000 2003) we prepared an inventory of the Finno-ugric minority languages in the vicinity of St.Petersburg and the southern and middle parts of Karelia. They represent a specific linguistic picture of an area where endangered languages such as Vepsian, Ingrian, Votic, Ingrian-Finnish and Karelian and various types of Russian archaic dialects have been spoken in close proximity to one another up to this day (Gerd et al. 2003).

The sound archives in St.Petersburg also contain important data on Yiddish, the language of the Jews in Eastern Europe, which at the beginning of the 20th century was used by millions of speakers in the Russian empire. In the archives we found an unpublished manuscript The Ballad in Jewish Folklore, together with material on corresponding wax cylinders. Together with specialists in St.Petersburg, we further explored the acoustic data in the sound archives and prepared the edition of the book. This took place in the framework of a project with the title Voices from the Shtetl, the Past and Present of the Yiddish Language in Russia (1998 - 2001), for which we have obtained financial support from the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research NWO (De Graaf, Kleiner and Svetozarova 2004).

2. Voices from Tundra and Taiga

Important activities related to linguistic databases in St.Petersburg concern the recordings of Russian dialects and minority languages in the Russian Federation (De Graaf 2004). Within the framework of the research program Voices from Tundra and Taiga the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research NWO financially supported our work in the period 2002 2005. We combined the data from old sound recordings with the results of modern fieldwork, in order to give a full description of the languages and cultures of ethnic groups in Russia. We studied endangered Arctic languages and cultures of the Russian Federation, which must be described rapidly before they become extinct. Our earlier work on the reconstruction technology for old sound recordings found in archives in St.Petersburg has made it possible to compare languages still spoken in the proposed research area with the same languages as they were spoken more than half a century ago. These sound recordings in the archives of St.Petersburg consist of spoken language, folksongs, fairy tales etc., among others in Siberian languages (Burykin et al. 2005, De Graaf 2004).

In these projects the techniques developed earlier are applied to some of the disappearing minority languages and cultures of Russia: Nivkh (Gilyak) and Uilta (Orok) on Sakhalin and Yukagir and Tungusic languages in Yakutia. Our goal is to set up a phono- and video-library of recorded stories, and of the folklore, singing and oral traditions of the peoples of Sakhalin and Yakutia. Thus the existing sound recordings in the archives of Sakhalin and Yakutia will be complemented by the results of new fieldwork expeditions. The data obtained are added to the existing archive material in St.Petersburg and part of it is made available on the internet and on CD-ROM.

This research project and the related documentation is carried out in close co-operation with scholars in local centers such as Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk who participate in the archiving of the sound recordings and in fieldwork expeditions. They are trained at St.Petersburg State University, and specialists from St.Petersburg and the Netherlands also visit them in order to set up new centers for the study and teaching of local languages and related subjects. For this purpose we organised a special seminar for Nivkh teachers in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in October 2003 (De Graaf and Shiraishi 2004).

Spontaneous speech and the reading of prepared texts is collected for (ethno)linguistic as well as for anthropological, folkloric and ethno-musicological analysis. These data are (video)recorded and analysed and they will thus illustrate the art of story telling and language use. These texts are published in scientific journals and books with annotations and audiovisual illustrations on CD-ROM and on the internet. The materials will thus become available for further analysis to scholars working in the field of phonetics, linguistics, anthropology, history, ethno-musicology and folklore.

The results of modern fieldwork and the reconstructed data from sound archives provide important information for the preparation of language descriptions, grammars, dictionaries and edited collections of oral and written literature. These can also be used to develop teaching methods, in particular for the younger members of certain ethnic groups, who do not have sufficient knowledge of their native language, in order to make them aware of their heritage. Our project will contribute to the documentation and to the preservation of Russia's cultural heritage. The database obtained will become available on the internet and provide a possibility for the exchange of information with other institutions all over the world. This global collaboration will make it possible to learn about the cultures and languages of the peoples of Russia and it can also provide new methods of teaching these topics. Some of our projects will illustrate the use of the internet for the introduction of teaching methods.

Using a phrase book for school children of Nivkh we recorded a native speaker during our fieldwork trip in 1990. The texts with the illustrations of the book are now shown on the internet together with the acoustic data. The separate phonemes are also given on a special table and by selecting one of them the student can listen to various speech sounds. This has as an advantage that students are able to learn the distinction between various separate phonemes (e.g. four k-sounds) of Nivkh, which are variants (allophones) of one phoneme in Russian. One of our research students and his Nivkh colleague have published a series of books with Nivkh stories, songs and conversation in which for the first time the corresponding texts are recorded on a CD as part of the books. The series, Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language I - III (Shiraishi and Lok 2002, 2003, 2004) appeared as a result of the Japanese program on Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim (ELPR) and the research program Voices from Tundra and Taiga. This unique material is not only used by linguists, but also by the language community itself, where it can be applied for teaching purposes.

3. Endangered Archives in the Russian Federation

In the summer of 2005, we finished a report on the NWO-project within the research program Voices from Tundra and Taiga, and we published a catalogue of the existing recordings of stories, folklore, singing and oral traditions of the peoples of Siberia (Burykin et al. 2005). This material has thus become available for further analysis by researchers working in the field of phonetics, linguistics, anthropology, history, ethno-musicology and folklore. The information is also highly important for the development of teaching methods for representatives of the related ethnic groups and for the conservation and revitalisation of their languages and cultures.

At present, many old recordings still remain hidden in private archives and places where the quality of preservation is not guaranteed. In a new project, which from September 2006 is financially supported by a special Programme on Endangered Archives at the British Library, we proposed to make part of these recordings available and to add them to the database developed in St.Petersburg. The St.Petersburg Institute for Linguistic Studies (ILS), a partner in the project, is one of the most important Russian centres for the investigation of minority and regional languages in the Russian Federation. Many researchers in this institute have collected sound material and many of their recordings (primary data) are not stored in safe places, whereas the related field notes, manuscripts, card files (secondary data) can be found in the institute or also in private archives.

Another partner in this new project on Endangered Archives is again the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Our aim is to re-record the material on sound carriers according to present-day technology (Schüller 2005) and store them in a safe place together with the metadata, which will be obtained from the related secondary data. It will be important to co-ordinate this with the staff of the Pushkinsky Dom, where the existing collection of great historical value (selected by UNESCO in its programme Memory of the World) can be enriched with these new data. In the project we are concentrating on a selection of recordings, especially those of some Siberian languages, such as Nivkh, Even, Evenki, Aleut, Nenets, Udege and other ones. Thus far we have produced a list of the available recordings in private possession. Most scholars who have collected these data, have approved the use of their recordings and contribute to the project with the preparation of the required metadata. Some of them also have good links with the Pushkinsky Dom and are members of the project group for the program Voices from Tundra and Taiga.

In other parts of Russia similar important collections can be found, not only in established institutions, but many of them are in private hands and thus endangered. As an example we should like to mention the private collections on Nivkh, which are available in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in Vladivostok, in London and in some other locations. For most of these, it can be said that the quality of preservation is below standard and insufficient. Following our long-standing collaboration with scholars from Sakhalin, we are planning to create facilities in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk for the storage of sound material related to the aboriginal languages of the island. Most important are the above mentioned Nivkh collections, but we should also like to add material on Sakhalin Ainu and Uilta. Of some of these private collections the size is approximately known, but in other cases this first has to be estimated. Within the framework of our project and future new projects, we would like to obtain access to these collections, copy them on modern sound carriers, make a catalogue available and publish part of the material together with the related recordings in St.Petersburg. On Sakhalin and in other parts of Russia, the local scholars will be involved in the preparation of these projects and get support for this from colleagues in St.Petersburg, Austria, the Netherlands and Japan.

4. How to organise sound archives in Russia

As has been stated before, valuable collections of sound recordings can be found in Russian archives and in private possession. Many of these archive materials are unique and of great historical and cultural importance, not only for the Russian Federation, but also for scholars in other countries. Nevertheless, it can be stated that for most of the Russian sound archives the quality of preservation is not guaranteed as a consequence of the following factors:

- Insufficient financial support;

- Lack of technical specialists for the preservation and description of the collections;

- Absence of standards for the preservation and description of the recordings;

- Weak technical archival facilities for the analogue as well as for the modern digital technology;

- Insufficient exchange of information between the sound archives;

- Absence of a national programme for the support of sound archives.

A further problem for the Russian sound archives beside the forgoing ones - is the fact that until now they have had very limited contacts with similar archives in other parts of the world. It will be important to establish more of these contacts with colleagues abroad and to contribute to their joint activities within the framework of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives,

The project Reconstruction of Sound Materials of Endangered Languages for Sound Archives in Russia makes it possible to establish these contacts. In this project, we propose to make part of the Russian recordings available to researchers all over the world and to add them to the database developed in St.Petersburg. The re-recording of the material in a central storage facility will modernise the possible archiving activities in the Russian Federation and bring them up-to date with the present day world standards.

The greater part of the available collections has initially been recorded on magnetic tape, mainly of Russian production. Old open reel tapes are on cellulose acetate base. These tapes have become brittle with age and many are in bad winding condition. Experience tells, however, that most of the tapes can still be played. All transfer work as well as digital storage is carried out strictly adhering to the standards set by the IASA Technical Committee (IASA-TC 03, IASA-TC 04). Equipment and work flow applied in the project will follow closely the experiences made in the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv over the past years, which have also proved successful in several similar projects in China, Romania and Albania.

Following IASA-TC 04, 5.4, for signal extraction from analogue magnetic tape, machines of preferably latest generation will be used: One machine optimised for the replay of studio tapes of higher speeds (19 and 38 cm/s, most of them full track mono). Another machine will be used for original (field) tapes recorded at slower speeds (down to 4.76 cm/s). Digitisation follows IASA-TC 04, 6.5, Small Scale Manual Approach: A high precision analogue to digital converter will be used; archival resolution will be according to de-facto standard of memory institutions 96 kHz, 24 bit. The digital audio work station consists of a sufficiently powerful PC, attached to a desk-top raid of sufficient buffer capacity. Archival files will be down-loaded to four separate sets of LTO-3 tapes, of which two will be stored in different places in St. Petersburg, one in the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, and one in the British Library. The work-station will also be equipped with a CD/DVD burner for the production of copies for the owners of the originals, and users. Parallel to archival files, access files in MP 3 format will be generated and stored on the desktop raid. For cataloguing and studying purposes within the St. Petersburg Phonogrammarchiv an intranet will be installed to supply signals to access work-stations.

The technical challenge of our project lies in the transfer of the (historical) sound documents into a safe, professionally organised digital repository. The main objectives are to retrieve signals in best possible quality from their original, transfer them into a true file format (wave) and store these files onto computer back-up tapes. Logistically, such work can only successfully be organised in a central place where some kind of technical infrastructure is available. The St. Petersburg Phonogram Archive (in the Pushkinsky Dom in St.Petersburg) will serve for this purpose, for it contains the most important historical collection of sound recordings in the Russian Federation and is already equipped with basic audiovisual machines. The various collections to be safeguarded will be brought to St. Petersburg, where they will be transferred along with relevant linguistic materials from the collection of the Archive itself.

In order to make the IASA standards, recommended practices and strategies more widely known we have translated the IASA-TC03 publication on The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy into Russian. It is important that sound archives in the Russian Federation will join the IASA and take notice of this and other publications. When in Russia up-to-date sound archives will be available with experienced technical personal and sufficient financial support, they can play a useful role in the International Association.

The availability in Russia of a central sound archive of linguistic data, created with the most up-to-date technical facilities will be of utmost importance, providing a source of authentic linguistic material for linguists specializing in languages spoken by minorities in the Russian Federation. Many of these languages are endangered and it is important to obtain all existing sound material and to make new recordings of speakers of these languages. Other Russian archives will profit from the expertice in the new centre in St.Petersburg and the links with foreign institutions will be strengthened, in particular with the sound archives in Vienna and Berlin. A future exchange of data between these archives will resume the historical relationship which existed at the beginning of the 20th century when they housed the most important collections in Europe. In this way joint international projects will further contribute to the documentation and the preservation of the worlds important cultural heritage. This holds in particular for the safeguarding and documentation of endangered minority languages.

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Dr. Tjeerd de Graaf St.Peterburg/Paterswolde, September 2007

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