Valeria Dobulevich
Lingua Franca
Interactive installation (generative sound, generative graphics, Jukebox, TouchDesigner)
2025
Lingua Franca is an alternative collection of popular music translated into four of Russia’s minority languages: Komi, Adyghe, Karelian, and Sakha. As you move across the texturized floor within the exhibition space, you are able to hear familiar musical compositions in translation. The four sides of the installation zone correspond to the four cardinal directions within Russia — its northern, southern, western, and eastern regions.
Lingua franса is a term borrowed from Latin (“the language of the Franks”), which has now come to mean an intermediary language used by speakers of multiple different languages. The projects aims to draw attention to the importance of preserving linguistic diversity and explore ways in which languages can be given new life in our reality.
As minority languages face the serious threat of extinction, sociolinguistic projects attempt to foster new ways to support and develop these languages. Unfortunately, the methods and outcomes of this work have often remained unknown to a wider audience. This project is an attempt to devise a new original way to work with linguistic data in the hope that it will help attract more attention to the plight of endangered languages, making them a part of everyday life.
The translation of the music was made possible by new digital developments by language activists, and was carried out with the assistance of sociolinguists and native speakers of the respective languages.
Special thanks to the Research Center for the Preservation, Revitalization and Documentation of the Languages of Russia of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and personally to Vyacheslav Ivanov and Madina Kade, as well as Danil Kizeev, Alim Mamkhegov, Kyunney Alekseeva, Zoya Kornilova, Mikhail Pozdnyakov, and Inal Bakov for their support in creating this project
Lingua Franca
Interactive installation (generative sound, generative graphics, Jukebox, TouchDesigner)
2025
Lingua Franca is an alternative collection of popular music translated into four of Russia’s minority languages: Komi, Adyghe, Karelian, and Sakha. As you move across the texturized floor within the exhibition space, you are able to hear familiar musical compositions in translation. The four sides of the installation zone correspond to the four cardinal directions within Russia — its northern, southern, western, and eastern regions.
Lingua franса is a term borrowed from Latin (“the language of the Franks”), which has now come to mean an intermediary language used by speakers of multiple different languages. The projects aims to draw attention to the importance of preserving linguistic diversity and explore ways in which languages can be given new life in our reality.
As minority languages face the serious threat of extinction, sociolinguistic projects attempt to foster new ways to support and develop these languages. Unfortunately, the methods and outcomes of this work have often remained unknown to a wider audience. This project is an attempt to devise a new original way to work with linguistic data in the hope that it will help attract more attention to the plight of endangered languages, making them a part of everyday life.
The translation of the music was made possible by new digital developments by language activists, and was carried out with the assistance of sociolinguists and native speakers of the respective languages.
Special thanks to the Research Center for the Preservation, Revitalization and Documentation of the Languages of Russia of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and personally to Vyacheslav Ivanov and Madina Kade, as well as Danil Kizeev, Alim Mamkhegov, Kyunney Alekseeva, Zoya Kornilova, Mikhail Pozdnyakov, and Inal Bakov for their support in creating this project