23 Sep 2022

#DS4SocietySeminar 2022 <> Why language technologies for African languages are important.

Mukondleteri Dumela

Talk Details

Abstract

The world is a diverse place with thousands of languages and cultural traditions. Africa alone has over 2,000 languages spoken amongst its 1,2 billion people. However, only a few African languages benefit from emerging human language technologies, and the gap continues to grow as new human language technologies are developed. Perhaps it is time to reflect on why it is critical that emerging human language technologies be inclusive of African languages and what we risk losing if we do not change course.

Speaker Bio

Mukondleteri Dumela is a Software Developer with a keen focus on African languages. Hebegan my career in the University of Pretoria in 2009 while studying towards a Bachelor of Information Science in Multimedia. Mukondleteri has since then been working on various projects to advance the status of technology for African languages.

I am founder of the two projects:

Angula Angula teaches people African languages using the voices of native speakers.

  • Angula is in BETA and is set for release in September 2022
  • The link is https://angula.app

Xitsonga.org Xitsonga.org is a non profit organisation that is focused on digitising the Xitsonga language.

  • The website has been accessed by over a million people.
  • Our apps have downloads of over 200 000.
  • Xitsonga Dictionary app won the 2020 Best Educational Solution at the MTN App Awards
  • The link is https://xitsonga.org

Video, Slides and Notes

Video - Talk + Q&A

Slides

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