“The Cherokee learned that if you ask a question and you are patient, after seven days it will answer itself.”
“切罗基人知道，如果你问一个问题，并有耐心，七天之后它会自己回答。”
The penultimate line from the first ever animation in the Cherokee language — named “The Beginning They Told,” or ᏗᏓᎴᏂᏍᎬ ᎤᏂᏃᎮᏓ — shares both a story and a lesson, as Grandpa Beaver, Little Water Beetle, and the Great Buzzard Su Li work together to form the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.
第一部切罗基语动画的倒数第二行——名为“他们讲述的开始”，或者简称为：ᏗᏓᎴᏂᏍᎬ ᎤᏂᏃᎮᏓ，既讲了一个故事，也讲了一个教训，讲述了海狸爷爷、小水甲虫和大鹰苏里一起创造了阿巴拉契亚山脉和落基山脉的故事。
Upon the video’s success, more than 20 years ago, the director and creator, Joseph Erb, turned down an invitation to be an Ivy League educator. “I wanted to go home and teach my community how to tell stories through animation,” said the 51-year-old Cherokee animator.
20多年前，这段视频大获成功后，导演兼主创约瑟夫·厄布（Joseph Erb）拒绝了成为常春藤盟校（Ivy League）教师的邀请。“我想回家，教我的社区如何通过动画讲故事，”这位51岁的切罗基动画师说。
His legacy of teaching is now two decades strong, and in 2022 he joined the UC Santa Cruz film and digital media department. As an associate professor, he is a pivotal part of a growing Indigenous studies community, an educator prioritizing intersectional approaches to filmmaking, and an artist whose work leaves the classroom, with animations, sculptures, and illustrations on display at galleries, installations and film festivals across the country.
他的教学遗产现在已经有20年了，并于2022年加入了加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的电影和数字媒体系。作为一名副教授，他是一个不断发展的土著研究社区的关键组成部分，是一名优先考虑电影制作交叉方法的教育家，也是一名艺术家，他的作品走出教室，在全国各地的画廊、装置和电影节上展出动画、雕塑和插图。
Communicating across platforms
跨平台通信
After completing his Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where his mentor offered him a teaching position, Erb returned home to Oklahoma in 2002. There, he began teaching youth programs including Cherokee and Muscogee Creek students from kindergarten to high school not only how to create videos and do animation, but how to document and tell Indigenous stories.
在完成宾夕法尼亚大学的美术硕士学位后，他的导师为他提供了一个教学职位，2002年，Erb回到了俄克拉何马州。在那里，他开始教授青少年项目，包括从幼儿园到高中的切罗基和马斯科吉克里克学生，不仅教他们如何制作视频和动画，还教他们如何记录和讲述原住民的故事。
With only one computer shared among the entire class, teaching computer animation wasn’t feasible at the time, Erb said. “So I started doing stop motion animation with the kids.”
Erb说，当时全班只有一台电脑，教授电脑动画是不可行的。“所以我开始和孩子们一起做定格动画。”
Erb asked his students to bring story ideas to the class to share, then they would decide as a group which ones they would bring to life. “As a result of that, everyone started sharing Cherokee stories with each other,” he said.
Erb让他的学生们把故事的想法带到课堂上分享，然后他们将作为一个小组决定他们将把哪些故事变成现实。“因此，每个人都开始互相分享切罗基人的故事，”他说。
In the late 2000s, Erb took the lead on efforts to include Tsalagi, the language of the Cherokee nation — one of the largest tribal nations in the country — included on Apple platforms, including the iPhone, Windows, Google and Microsoft.
在2000年代后期，Erb率先将切罗基族（该国最大的部落民族之一）的语言Tsalagi纳入苹果平台，包括iPhone， Windows，谷歌和微软。
“We were initially rejected by Microsoft for not having enough speakers of the language,” Erb said. “So we went to talk to Apple around the end of 2007.”
Erb说：“微软最初拒绝了我们，因为我们没有足够多的人说这门语言。“所以我们在2007年底前后去找苹果谈。”
He liaised a meeting between company heads — “everyone but Steve Jobs” — and the chief of the Cherokee tribe at the time, immersion teachers, translators and kids in his program. The meeting was successful, and the Cherokee language became part of the OS 4.1 release on the iPhone in 2010 — the first Indigenous language supported on Apple devices.
他安排了一次会议，与会者包括公司负责人——“除了史蒂夫·乔布斯”——以及当时的切罗基部落首领、浸入式教学教师、翻译和参与他项目的孩子们。会议很成功，切罗基语言成为2010年iPhone 4.1操作系统的一部分——这是苹果设备支持的第一种土著语言。
“Then Google contacted us, and we started adding our language to the Google search engine and Gmail. And then Microsoft invited us back and we got on Windows 8 and Windows 10,” he said. “It was a lot of work. Teams of people, many of them volunteers in the community, spent thousands of hours to do a million and a half translations.”
“后来谷歌联系了我们，我们开始把我们的语言添加到谷歌搜索引擎和Gmail中。然后微软邀请我们回来，我们使用了Windows 8和Windows 10。”“工作量很大。许多人，其中许多是社区的志愿者，花了数千小时完成了150万份翻译工作。”
Erb later helped other Indigenous nations, like the Osage, follow suit. The Cherokee people have always been quick to adapt to new technologies, he said; they had the first Native printing press, for example.
Erb后来帮助其他土著民族，如奥塞奇族，效仿。他说，切罗基人总是能很快适应新技术；例如，他们有了第一台土著印刷机。
His language in technology work aside, he is a prolific sculptor, jeweler and artist.
除了技术方面的语言，他还是一位多产的雕塑家、珠宝商和艺术家。
Erb—called “Doda,” meaning father, by his young son—illustrates children’s stories that he collaborates on with other Cherokee artists, like “Clack, Clack! Smack!” a narrative about the Indigenous sport stickball, which resembles lacrosse.
Erb被他年幼的儿子称为“Doda”，意思是父亲，他与其他切罗基艺术家合作，为孩子们的故事画插图，比如“Clack, Clack!”这是一部关于土著运动棍球的故事，类似于长曲棍球。
He also enjoys working with copper. One of his pieces, which he worked on while teaching at the University of Missouri prior to moving to Santa Cruz, is on display at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma.
他还喜欢与铜打交道。他的一件作品是在搬到圣克鲁斯之前在密苏里大学教书时创作的，现在在俄克拉何马州的第一美国人博物馆展出。
Called “Indigenous Brilliance,” the two-story digital illustration rendered on copper panels is meant to encapsulate Native knowledge, resilience, and the affirmation of a vibrant future for his people. The museum honored Erb with a “Creative Native” award for the work at its annual Tribal Nations gala in 2022.
这座两层楼高的数字插图被称为“土著光辉”，呈现在铜板上，旨在概括土著知识、韧性，以及对其人民充满活力的未来的肯定。在2022年的年度部落国家庆典上，博物馆授予厄尔布“创意原住民”奖。
Cross-cultural compassion and learning
跨文化同情与学习
Erb is frustrated that Indigenous culture is often depicted in the media as past tense, despite the fact that Indigenous peoples and nations are very much contemporary and part of the future, he said. Many of his goals in the UCSC film department center around bucking this theme and demonstrating that every member of his community matters to that vision of the future.
Erb 感到沮丧的是，媒体经常把土著文化描绘成过去式，尽管土著人民和民族在很大程度上是当代的，也是未来的一部分。他在加州大学洛杉矶分校电影系的许多目标都围绕着这一主题，并表明他所在社区的每一个成员都对未来的愿景至关重要。
“He’s a model for positive interaction,” said John Brown Childs, a member of the Massachusett tribe and distinguished emeritus professor of sociology at UCSC. “It’s not just what he says, it’s what he does, his words and deeds. And the students really get that, and the colleagues who know him — we all love him, he’s very generous with the sharing of his knowledge and expertise,” Childs said.
“他是积极互动的典范，”马萨诸塞部落成员、加州大学圣地亚哥分校（UCSC）杰出的社会学名誉教授约翰·布朗·蔡尔兹（John Brown Childs）说。“这不仅仅是他说的话，而是他的行为，他的言行。学生们真的明白这一点，认识他的同事们都很喜欢他，他非常慷慨地分享他的知识和专业知识。”
He has been friends with Erb and his family for several years. The two met when Erb first settled into faculty housing on campus in 2022, next door to Childs and his wife, who now call him “Netop,” a term of deep friendship in the Massachusett language.
他和Erb及其家人已经是好几年的朋友了。二人于2022年相识，当时厄布刚住进学校的教职工宿舍，就住在蔡尔兹夫妇的隔壁。蔡尔兹夫妇现在称Erb为“Netop”，这是马萨诸塞州语言中表示深厚友谊的一个词。
The two, both part of the Indigenous faculty network, enjoyed discussing tribal values and how to embrace the world while remaining true to those values.
这两个人都是土著教师网络的一部分，他们喜欢讨论部落价值观，以及如何在坚持这些价值观的同时拥抱世界。
“Joseph is very notable for being deeply rooted in his belonging to and support for the Cherokee Nation,” Childs said. “At the same time, he’s also able to reach out to other communities to be a help to them.”
蔡尔兹说：“约瑟夫深深扎根于他对切罗基民族的归属感和支持，这一点非常值得注意。”“与此同时，他也能够接触到其他社区，帮助他们。”
Erb helped Childs’s tribe work on a language revitalization program, assisting the Massachusett tribal language committee.
Erb 帮助蔡尔兹的部落制定了一项语言振兴计划，协助马萨诸塞州部落语言委员会。
“It speaks well of the university that he is here,” Childs said. “He’s an example of the right way to go about hiring.”
蔡尔兹说：“他在这里是对这所大学的良好评价。”“他是正确招聘方式的典范。”
The addition of Erb to the UCSC community came at a time when school leadership began recognizing the campus had amassed a strong cluster of faculty and students focused on Indigenous studies and wanted to continue growing those offerings, according to Celine Parreñas Shimizu, former Dean of the Arts.
根据前艺术院长Celine Parreñas Shimizu的说法，Erb加入UCSC社区的时候，学校领导开始意识到校园已经聚集了一大批专注于土著研究的教职员工和学生，并希望继续增加这些产品。
She recalled being struck by Erb’s underlying mission, which he shared after their first meeting: “He said, ‘I don’t do my research for myself. I do it for the Cherokee people.’”
她回忆说，她被Erb的潜在使命打动了，他在他们第一次见面后分享了这个使命：“他说，‘我不是为自己做研究。我这么做是为了切罗基人。’”
“He redefines how we think of the role of scholarship in society — it’s really to serve community, and his media reflects a living thriving culture of people who’ve never vanished,” she said.
她说：“他重新定义了我们对学术在社会中的作用的看法——它真的是为社区服务，他的媒体反映了一种从未消失的人的活跃繁荣的文化。”
Stories, Erb said, push his communities forward so that they continue to be pertinent and survive. He feels that Parreñas Shimizu — and the entire department — are fully supportive of his values as an educator.
Erb说，故事推动着他的社区向前发展，使他们继续与时俱进并生存下去。他觉得Parreñas清水-和整个部门-是完全支持他的价值观作为一个教育家。
“She understands that when you bring in multiple perspectives of how you create film, you make better filmmakers, no matter who they are, or what culture they come from,” Erb said. For instance, he said, a Mexican filmmaker who learns from a Japanese filmmaker, can learn an entirely new way of thinking about how films are made — about their structure and form.
Erb 说：“她明白，当你从多个角度来看待如何创作电影时，你就能成为更好的电影制作人，不管他们是谁，也不管他们来自什么文化。”例如，他说，一位墨西哥电影人向一位日本电影人学习，可以学到一种全新的思考电影制作方式的方法——关于电影的结构和形式。
“This is the kind of environment UCSC has. It has a high percentage of multicultural racial groups that are here,” Erb said. “Throughout my department, there’s a lot of work that goes into making gorgeous media about places around the world that you haven’t heard of or you haven’t thought about, and are dealing with issues that affect them, from land back movements to environmental movements.”
“这就是加州大学圣迭戈分校的环境。这里有很高比例的多元文化种族群体，”Erb 说。“在我的整个部门，有很多工作是关于世界各地你没有听说过或你没有想过的地方制作精美的媒体，并处理影响他们的问题，从土地归还运动到环境运动。”
The university enables artists to talk about these big ideas without trying to homogenize anything, Erb and Parreñas Shimizu agreed.
Erb和Parreñas Shimizu都同意，这所大学让艺术家们在不试图将任何东西同质化的情况下谈论这些伟大的想法。
“We cannot but be moved by the way students wish to learn, and they’re asking for a decolonized curriculum. Native American cinema, African American cinema; I think that’s what they consider a more complete education that fills the glaring gaps in their knowledge,” Parreñas Shimizu said, adding that because of this desire, students seek out Erb and UC Santa Cruz specifically.
“我们不得不被学生们希望学习的方式所感动，他们要求一个非殖民化的课程。印第安人电影，非裔美国人电影；Parreñas Shimizu说：“我认为这是他们认为更完整的教育，可以填补他们知识上的明显空白。”他补充说，正是出于这种愿望，学生们专门选择了Erb和加州大学圣克鲁斯分校。
An accessible future
触手可及的未来
UC Santa Cruz has long been lauded as a hub in language and AI work. Matthew Wagers, professor and department chair of the linguistics department, is leading an effort to establish a cross-campus research network focused on diversity in language technology, including AI large language models, across six of the UC campuses.
加州大学圣克鲁兹分校长期以来一直被誉为语言和人工智能研究的中心。加州大学语言学系教授兼系主任马修·韦杰斯（Matthew Wagers）正在领导一个跨校园的研究网络，重点关注语言技术的多样性，包括人工智能大型语言模型，该网络覆盖加州大学的六个校区。
With such models, which undergird programs like ChatGPT, the demographics of speakers whose languages and speaking patterns help train the algorithms can entrench certain biases and patterns, he said. Through workshops, as well as online resources for training and curriculum, the goal of the project is to highlight and address the need for diversity in the design of language technologies, while identifying and expanding the impact of the UC system’s contributions on these areas.
他说，这样的模型是ChatGPT等程序的基础，使用语言和说话模式的使用者的人口统计数据可以帮助训练算法，从而巩固某些偏见和模式。通过研讨会，以及在线培训和课程资源，该项目的目标是强调和解决语言技术设计多样性的需求，同时确定和扩大UC系统在这些领域的贡献的影响。
Wagers said he and his colleagues are trying to broaden the reach of their research, so those training these models, for instance, include the languages of the adults and children that reflect the community.
韦杰斯说，他和他的同事们正在努力扩大他们的研究范围，所以那些训练这些模型的人，例如，包括反映社区的成人和儿童的语言。
“Study participants are often monolingual, and California is, of course, a multilingual, multi-ethnic kind of place, so what we’re learning from those speakers might not always be representative,” Wagers said.
韦杰斯说：“研究参与者通常只说一种语言，而加州当然是一个多语言、多民族的地方，所以我们从这些说话者那里学到的东西可能并不总是具有代表性。”
The project, which began earlier this year, will end in fall 2026.
该项目于今年早些时候开始，将于2026年秋季结束。
For nearly two decades, Wagers has studied language processing — how people access the meaning of words and put them together. He views this UC-system-wide effort as an opportunity to connect a network of research across California to explore how humans interact with AI, and the challenges therein that remain unaddressed.
近二十年来，韦杰斯一直在研究语言处理——人们如何获取单词的含义并将它们组合在一起。他认为加州大学整个系统的努力是一个机会，可以连接整个加州的研究网络，探索人类如何与人工智能互动，以及其中尚未解决的挑战。
“There are opportunities to improve language technologies to address the needs of people who speak or communicate differently, such as people who stutter, or language users who are blind,” Wagers said. “There has been a long tradition of linguists and language activists at UCSC looking to expand access to language tools.”
韦杰斯说：“我们有机会改进语言技术，以满足说话或交流方式不同的人的需求，比如口吃者或盲人。”“加州大学圣迭戈分校的语言学家和语言活动人士一直在寻求扩大语言工具的使用范围。”
Wagers said Erb’s work getting the Cherokee language onto phones, computers and platforms like Google is demonstrative of how to generate such access in an impactful way.
韦杰斯说，Erb将切罗基语带入手机、电脑和谷歌等平台的工作，是如何以有影响力的方式产生这种访问的示范。
“We live our lives online and through technology now, and if we simultaneously want to live our lives in the language of our community or of our family and heritage, there has to be an effort to bridge this gap,” Wagers said. “Even having the right kind of keyboard so that you can type in that language helps a diverse group be their full and authentic selves.”
韦杰斯说：“我们现在通过网络和技术生活，如果我们同时想用我们社区或家庭和传统的语言生活，就必须努力弥合这一差距。”“即使有合适的键盘，你也可以用那种语言打字，这有助于一个多元化的群体表现出完整而真实的自我。”
That task was far from easy, Erb said.
Erb 说，这项任务远非易事。
The Cherokee language has 86 characters, which affected the design of a digital keyboard across platforms optimized for languages like English, with around one-third as many characters. Rather than an alphabet, Cherokee uses a writing system where each symbol represents a syllable.
切罗基语有86个字符，这影响了为英语等语言优化的跨平台数字键盘的设计，而英语的字符数量只有切罗基语的三分之一。切罗基人使用一种书写系统，每个符号代表一个音节，而不是字母表。
“It couldn’t take up the whole screen and we had to follow Apple’s philosophy about design without quite knowing what that was,” Erb said. “Then sometimes we had to come up with words. Like, we didn’t have a word for email.”
“它不能占据整个屏幕，我们必须遵循苹果的设计哲学，而不知道它是什么，”Erb说。“有时我们不得不想出一些词语。比如，我们没有一个词来形容电子邮件。”
A future goal is addressing voice-to-text in Cherokee, he said. Cherokee is a tonal language, meaning changes in tone can alter the meaning of words, so that makes the task quite complicated.
他说，未来的目标是解决切诺基语的语音转文本问题。切罗基语是一种有音调的语言，意思是音调的变化会改变单词的意思，所以这使得任务变得相当复杂。
Reflecting back on the quarter-century journey that brought him to UC Santa Cruz, Erb is hopeful about the impacts he’s had.
回首将他带到加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的四分之一个世纪的旅程，Erb对自己所产生的影响充满希望。
“Our language is still in decline, but we have more tools than we used to when I started,” he said. “The tech companies now take us seriously. When I first started reaching out, we weren’t even a thought.”
他说：“我们的语言仍在衰落，但我们拥有的工具比我刚开始工作时更多。”“科技公司现在很重视我们。当我第一次开始联系的时候，我们甚至都没有想过。”
His day-to-day work has become more joyful, too. A lot of the difficult, repetitive work involving coding for operating systems or typing up Cherokee documents are behind him, he said. “Now, instead of doing that stuff, we’re sitting there making stories about our community.”
他的日常工作也变得更加快乐。他说，为操作系统编码或输入切罗基文档等许多困难、重复的工作都已经过去了。“现在，我们不再做那些事情，而是坐在那里制作关于我们社区的故事。”
Erb recalled having to draw each Cherokee word by hand in Photoshop 20 years ago for “The Beginning They Told.” Largely thanks to his work since then, that process is no longer necessary.
Erb回忆说，20年前，为了拍摄《他们讲述的开端》（The Beginning They Told），他不得不在Photoshop里用手画出每个切诺基语单词。很大程度上要感谢他此后的工作，这个过程不再是必要的。
“Today, our filmmakers and bookmakers and writers can type in our language,” he said. “It ultimately preserves the inherent, important knowledge therein.”
“今天，我们的电影制作人、博彩公司和作家可以用我们的语言打字，”他说。“它最终保留了其中固有的重要知识。”
