Shure Sets Out to Preserve Endangered Languages in Partnership with Charity Living Tongues

Promoting Shure’s brand-new range of wireless microphones, MoveMic, the audio company that has facilitated historic cultural moments - from JFK’s and Martin Luther King’s speeches to music recordings and performances by the greats such as Michael Jackson and Dua Lipa - now commits to helping preserve our culture. In its latest campaign, ‘No Voice Left Behind’, Shure partners with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages to secure the recording and preservation of languages that are threatened to go extinct.

Travelling across India, the experts from Living Tongues used Shure’s MoveMic to record and document under-represented languages in India, starting with the Santali language. The campaign film, created by Media.Monks, details how the archive recordings are made to be used by the community and researchers to preserve and research the language and to transfer it to future generations.

In its three-year partnership Shure supports Living Tongues not only by providing equipment but also with a donation to support the organisation on its mission to battle the mass extinction of languages.

Eduardo Valdes, associate vice president of global marketing and product management at Shure, said, “With a heritage of developing some of the most fully featured and reliable wireless audio gear, Shure has the distinct honour to support organisations that depend on this technology to do their work. It’s been an absolute pleasure equipping Living Tongues with MoveMic and watching how this noble organisation executes its work in some of the most extreme conditions while still capturing flawless wireless audio.”

Anna Luisa Daigneault, program director of Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, added, “We are passionate about working with communities who speak under-represented languages, and making high-quality audio recordings is an important part of the language documentation process. Our organisation has been using Shure microphones for many years, and we are thrilled to add the MoveMic to our toolkit.”

“Not only are we committed to the scientific side of language documentation by publishing studies, but we are also dedicated to helping citizen-linguists who are working towards creating digital resources for their languages. This year, thanks to the partnership with Shure, we are pleased to award several MoveMics and Shure headphones to citizen-linguists who are using our Living Dictionaries online platform to safeguard their languages for future generations."

Thomas Genower, creative director at Media.Monks, shared, “Our ability to express ourselves in our native tongue is what gives our rich and diverse cultures their unique identities. It’s vital that we document, record and safeguard endangered languages in as much detail and fidelity as we can. This partnership holds real purpose, highlighting both the quality of Shure’s product and the crucial work that Living Tongues institute for endangered languages do. The value of this project is that we’ve been able to aid the implementation of language preservation and grow awareness for it.”