In a continued effort to promote all of South Africa’s indigenous languages online, a two-day collaborative workshop was held on 20 and 21 June at the Central University of Technology (CUT), Free State, in Bloemfontein.
The university’s Language Services unit collaborated with the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (Sadilar), the free encyclopaedia (Wikipedia), and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) Z resulting in the SWiP project.
Aimed at fast-tracking the promotion all of South Africa’s indigenous languages online, the project has been running since October last year. Its initial phase focuses on Wikipedia training across the nation. Communities of indigenous language users are equipped with the skills to create and review content on Wikipedia, and hereby collectively increase their languages’ digital footprint.
In line with the CUT Vision 2030, the SWiP workshop served as a milestone step towards the beneficial use of digital platforms.
Dr Sally Dzingwa, CUT registrar, expressed the profound impact of the participants’ contributions in promoting the use of indigenous language on Wikipedia and other digital platforms in the future.
“The CUT is thrilled to embark on such a collaborative and informative journey of enhancing and expanding the knowledge available on Wikipedia and the role it intends to play in the development of indigenous languages corpora,” she said.
Nikiwe Matebula, manager of PanSALB Free State, explained that the board’s role in the SWiP project included promoting the use of indigenous languages on public platforms, promoting standardised language practices as determined by the orthography rules published every five years by the language board.
“These rules, which govern the correct spelling, pronunciation, and use of words in a language, are crucial for those wanting to write publicly in their language. South Africans are not contributing to Google Translate, and we need the data to train those models to use the correct translations for certain words.”
Bobby Shabangu of Wikipedia said South Africa was a chapter affiliated with Wikimedia.
“We advocate for free knowledge and enhancing the representation of our South African languages on Wikipedia.”
