Dialect & Minority Language Documentation Platform 159

China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform (中国语言资源保护工程采录展示平台) is an academic data platform dedicated to preserving and managing dialect and ethnic minority language resources. It primarily relies on two projects—Chinese Dialect Resource Survey and Ethnic Minority Language Resource Survey—to digitize related language resources, including storage, organization, analysis, and presentation, and to collect language resources from the public via the Internet, showcasing the richness of Chinese languages.

The China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform is one of the core achievements of the "China Language Resource Protection Engineering" implemented by the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission. It provides the public and professional scholars with preservation, retrieval, display, and application services for multimodal language resources. The platform began trial operation on September 30, 2020, and can be accessed via a link. The project was launched in 2015, with its first phase completed by the end of 2019, covering all provinces nationwide, surveying 1,712 locations, and including 123 languages and all Chinese dialects. It is currently the largest language resource repository and exhibition platform in the world.

The data of the China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform covers 34 provincial-level administrative regions nationwide (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), with approximately 1,834 survey points completed, including 1,161 Chinese dialect points, 328 ethnic minority language points, 243 endangered language/dialect points, and 102 language and culture points. The original corpus collected exceeds 10 million entries (approximately 5 million audio and video each), with a total capacity of about 100TB.

Main Features of the China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform:

• GIS Map Retrieval: Survey points can be selected by region, allowing horizontal comparison of multidimensional corpus content such as basic information, individual characters, vocabulary, and example sentences.

• Dual-Entry Mode: The expert platform provides complete data downloads and online analysis tools; the public platform supports users uploading content and interactive sharing, enhancing participation.

• Multimodal Display: Through five forms—recordings, videos, images, International Phonetic Alphabet, and text transcription—the platform authentically recreates the contexts in which languages are used.

• Continuous Updates: The second phase will continue to add new data such as oral cultural transcriptions and ethnic minority language annotations, which will be gradually released.

Process for Using the China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform:

• Access and Registration: Visit the official website link of the China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform, register and log in as prompted, and then you can use the retrieval and browsing functions (the expert platform offers more advanced functions for professional users).

• Retrieval and Browsing: Select a survey point on the map to view the entry pronunciations, expressions, and videos at that point; you can also conduct multidimensional retrieval and comparison using keywords, phonetic symbols, or administrative divisions.

• Social Participation: The public platform supports users uploading audio and video, participating in annotation and transcription, and promoting resource improvement through themed interactions, forming a crowdsourcing mechanism that combines scientific rigor with public participation.

Main Achievements of the China Language Resource Protection Engineering Collection and Exhibition Platform:

• Second Phase Construction: Launched in 2021, focusing on strengthening development and application, improving platform functions and security, while advancing intelligent technologies (such as language recognition, speech synthesis, and cross-modal retrieval), continuously enhancing the development and utilization of resources.

• Landmark Achievements: Published books including "Collection of Chinese Language and Culture" (《中国语言文化典藏》, 50 volumes), "Records of Endangered Chinese Languages" (《中国濒危语言志》, 30 volumes), and "Collection of Chinese Language Resources" (《中国语言资源集》); constructed a large-scale knowledge graph of language resources and jointly produced the large-scale language humanities documentary "Chinese Language" (《中国话》) to raise awareness of language resource protection across society.