Publication

Looking forward by looking back: Applying lessons from 20 years of African language technology

Martin Benjamin
2015
Article de conférence
Résumé

This paper takes a frank look at what has and has not been achieved in African language technology during the past two decades. Several questions are addressed: What was the status of technology for African languages 20 years ago? What were the major initiatives during that time? What were their successes and failures? What can we learn from these experiences? How does this inform the work that we are planning going forward? Examining in particular the history of Swahili, it is argued that technology projects have often achieved their expressed aims, but have collectively not significantly advanced the normalization of African languages as operable within the technical sphere, even while Africa has become blanketed with mobile technology. It is argued that future projects will succeed only by asserting the goal that technology of 2035 must be fully operational in users' primary languages, and gearing policy, funding, and individual project efforts toward gathering and deploying linguistic data for a large number of African languages to meet cutting-edge technologies as they emerge

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Concepts associés (17)
Langues en Afrique
upright=1.5|vignette|Panneau routier de bienvenue au Cap-Nord en Afrique du Sud, en afrikaans (en haut à gauche), anglais (en bas à gauche), tswana (en haut à droite) et xhosa (en bas à droite). Cette image illustre la coexistence de nombreuses langues, d'origine africaine ou coloniale, dans beaucoup de pays d'Afrique. Le nombre de langues en Afrique est généralement estimé à environ pour mille quatre cent millions d'habitants, mais les langues d'une certaine importance sont bien moins nombreuses et beaucoup peuvent aussi être considérées comme des variantes dialectales de langues plus importantes.
Union africaine
L'Union africaine (UA) est une organisation intergouvernementale d'États africains créée le à Durban (Afrique du Sud), en application de la déclaration de Syrte du . Elle remplace l'Organisation de l'unité africaine (OUA). La mise en place de ses institutions (Commission, Parlement panafricain et Conseil de paix et de sécurité) a lieu en , au sommet de Maputo (Mozambique). Son premier président est le Sud-Africain Thabo Mbeki, précédemment président de l'OUA.
Mobile technology
Mobile technology is the technology used for cellular communication. Mobile technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years. Since the start of this millennium, a standard mobile device has gone from being no more than a simple two-way pager to being a mobile phone, GPS navigation device, an embedded web browser and instant messaging client, and a handheld gaming console. Many experts believe that the future of computer technology rests in mobile computing with wireless networking.
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