As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing.In fact, half of the 6,000—7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century,according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organization(UNESCO).
随着越来越多的人使用英语、汉语、西班牙语和阿拉伯语等全球语言，其他语言正在迅速消失。根据联合国教科文组织（UNESCO）的数据，当今世界6000至7000种语言中有一半可能在下个世纪消亡。
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations—UNESCO and National Geographic among them—have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
为了防止语言流失，联合国教科文组织和《国家地理》等多个组织的学者多年来一直在记录濒临消亡的语言及其所反映的文化。
Mark Turin,a scientist at the Macmillan Center, Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living,working,and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
专门研究喜马拉雅山的语言和口头传统的耶鲁大学麦克米伦中心的科学家马克·都灵（Mark Turin）正遵循着这一传统。他最近出版的书《唐格米语语法》以民族语言介绍了说话者及其文化，这本书源于他在尼泊尔一个村庄的生活、工作和养育家庭的经历。
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
都灵只是将记录坦格米语和文化作为一个起点，他还试图将印度、尼泊尔、不丹和中国的喜马拉雅山脉地区的其他语言和口头传统包括在内。但他并不满足于只是在这些声音消失之前作些简单的记录。
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials—including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes—which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
都灵在剑桥大学发现了大量重要的材料，包括照片、胶卷、录音带和现场记录，这些资料一直没有被研究过，急需关注与保护。
Now,through the two organizations that he has founded—the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project—Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world,available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
现在，都灵通过他创建的数字喜马拉雅项目和世界口述文学项目这两个组织，开始了一场制作此类文件的运动，这些文件可以在世界各地的图书馆和商店中找到，不仅可供学者使用，也可供最初收集材料的社团年轻人使用。都灵指出，多亏了数字技术和广泛可用的互联网，濒危语言得以保存并重新获得语言社团的关注。
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