{"id":12843,"date":"2026-08-19T12:52:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/?p=12843"},"modified":"2026-08-19T12:52:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:52:42","slug":"championing-isindebele-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/championing-isindebele-in-the-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Championing isiNdebele in the digital age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

19 August 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As we celebrate Women’s Month under the theme \u201cBuilding Resilient Economies for All\u201d, it is also an opportunity to recognise women whose work is helping shape the country’s scientific, technological and knowledge landscape. Among them is Nomsa J. Skosana, a digital humanities researcher specialising in isiNdebele at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With seven years in her current role, Skosana’s expertise spans translation studies, natural language processing tools evaluation and sociolinguistics. Her passion for isiNdebele stems from its position as one of South Africa’s comparatively under-resourced and under-researched languages. This inspired her to contribute to its academic, digital and technological development, including the creation of terminology and digital language resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I chose this career because I wanted to contribute meaningfully to the academic, digital and technological advancement of isiNdebele,” she explains. “My goal is to help create a stronger foundation for isiNdebele to thrive across different academic and digital domains.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skosana currently serves as the project leader of the SADiLaR\u2013Wikipedia\u2013PanSALB (SWiP)<\/a> project, a collaboration between SADiLaR, Wikimedia ZA and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). The project promotes the preservation, development and digital visibility of South African languages by empowering communities to create and expand Wikipedia content in their own languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through SWiP, she contributes to the development of sovereign language data and digital corpora that can support research and the development of language technologies for South African languages. Seeing isiNdebele represented on a global knowledge platform such as Wikipedia has been particularly meaningful to her, demonstrating that indigenous languages can participate meaningfully in the digital knowledge ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her journey has not been without challenges. The rapid development of digital technologies and the constantly changing research environment require continuous learning, adaptability and a willingness to embrace new approaches. These experiences have taught her that leadership, collaboration, persistence and continuous learning are essential for creating meaningful change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Skosana, building resilient economies means ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to participate in knowledge creation, innovation and economic development. This includes ensuring that indigenous languages are represented in education, research, technology and the digital economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She encourages women in science to develop knowledge, technologies and innovations that respond to the needs of their communities. Her message to young women and girls interested in science, technology, digital humanities and research is to value and prioritise isiNdebele and other South African indigenous languages. She encourages young people to consider studying these languages further, even while pursuing careers in science, technology or other disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is still a great deal of work to be done to advance isiNdebele across these disciplines,” she says. Combining language expertise with skills in technology, science and research, she believes, can open new opportunities and contribute to the future development of the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead, Skosana hopes her work will help firmly establish isiNdebele in digital spaces and contribute to sustainable digital language resources, particularly isiNdebele corpora, that can support researchers, students, developers and future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her hope is that the resources and knowledge created today will become a foundation for future research and innovation. Through her work, Skosana is helping to ensure that isiNdebele is not only preserved, but continues to evolve, participate and thrive in an increasingly digital world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research Profiles<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Scholar: https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=D3_PPPoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao<\/a>
ORCID: https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2833-5895<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by: Thandeka Madonsela<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 August 2026 As we celebrate Women’s Month under the theme \u201cBuilding Resilient Economies for All\u201d, it is also an opportunity to recognise women whose work is helping shape the country’s scientific, technological and knowledge landscape. Among them is Nomsa J. Skosana, a digital humanities researcher specialising in isiNdebele at the South African Centre for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[741,733],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12844,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12843\/revisions\/12844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}