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SADiLaR raises global visibility from Poland to Italy
Menno van Zaanen, professor in Digital Humanities at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) recently spent a productive two weeks at the University of Gdańsk in Poland to conduct teaching activities and interdisciplinary research in digital humanities. He was invited by Dr Karolina Rudnicka from the Faculty of Languages as part of…
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SADiLaR Executive Director elected as Fellow of the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences
The Executive Director of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), Prof Langa Khumalo, has been elected as Fellow of the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences (ZAS). Founded in 2003, ZAS recognizes and promotes outstanding science through election to membership, and this process brings recognition, honour, distinction, and excellence to scientific programmes, projects, research…
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First-of-a-kind study measures children’s utterances in Southern Bantu languages
A study published by the Child Language Development node of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) is the first of its kind to measure children’s utterances in isiXhosa, Sesotho, Setswana and Xitsonga. The research team, led by node manager and principal investigator Prof Heather Brookes, published their results in the Journal of…
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SADiLaR’s strategic vision presented to CLARIN Management
Stakeholder engagement is a crucial part of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)’s strategic mission. With the adoption of a new five-year strategy plan, the infrastructure is dedicated to promoting its mandate and establishing a local and global presence to attract potential partners in the domains of natural language processing and digital…
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SADiLaR celebrates PhD aimed at improving Sesotho learners’ reading skills
A former high school teacher’s quest to improve the poor reading ability of learners in low-resource languages has resulted in a groundbreaking PhD centered on the development of a means to measure text readability while developing digital language resources for Sesotho. This research is the first of its kind and will also serve as a…
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Child speech database research project attracts international attention
A research project aimed at compiling a child speech database for the South African context, with a focus on speech samples of typically developing Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa-speaking children, is garnering attention both nationally and internationally. Funded by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) and led by Juan Bornman, now professor…
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SADiLaR funding helps launch the ǂKhomani | Hugh Brody Archive
A research project, funded by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), has helped realise the long-held dream of South Africa’s ǂKhomani community to share their proud history with the rest of the world. Dr Kerry Jones, director of African Tongue and research lead on the project, has worked tirelessly with her research…
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SADiLaR workshop highlights benefits of online dictionaries
The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) recently facilitated a successful online-dictionary training workshop at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Hosted by UKZN’s University Language Planning and Development Office (ULPDO) on 7 December 2023, the one-day workshop invited staff, students, and language practitioners to delve into the world of online dictionaries and discover…
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South Africa joins CLARIN ERIC as member
After a fruitful five years as an observer of CLARIN ERIC, South Africa has become an official member of the distributed digital infrastructure as of 1 January 2024. South Africa is the first member country outside of Europe, and SADiLaR is the proud representative body for SA. Currently, CLARIN ERIC has 24 members and two…
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Digital footprint crucial for indigenous language preservation
“The work that is being done by SWiP is highly commendable. The key message of today’s meeting for me is the importance of preserving our languages. As a Zulu speaker, it is crucial that isiZulu does not die.” These are the words of Tholakele Nkwanyana, a lecturer in Education and Language Development at North-West University…
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