{"id":12846,"date":"2026-08-21T12:57:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/?p=12846"},"modified":"2026-08-21T12:57:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:57:29","slug":"from-language-patterns-to-digital-possibilities-tanja-gaustads-journey-in-computational-linguistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/from-language-patterns-to-digital-possibilities-tanja-gaustads-journey-in-computational-linguistics\/","title":{"rendered":"From language patterns to digital possibilities: Tanja Gaustad\u2019s Journey in computational linguistics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

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Across South Africa, women in science and research are helping shape a more inclusive digital future, one in which our languages, knowledge and communities are represented. Their contributions may take many forms, but together they are helping ensure that technological progress leaves no language behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Tanja Gaustad, a fascination with language patterns sparked a career dedicated to ensuring South Africa’s languages thrive in the digital age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a data scientist and senior computational linguist at the Centre for Text Technology (CTexT)<\/a>, a South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)<\/a> research node, Tanja leads language data and annotation projects, teaches language technology courses, supervises postgraduate students and contributes to the centre’s strategic direction. Her journey into computational linguistics began while studying French, English and General Linguistics, where a corpus linguistics course revealed how large collections of text could unlock fascinating insights into language. That curiosity ultimately led her to complete a PhD in word sense disambiguation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, her work focuses on developing high-quality digital language resources and linguistic annotations that support researchers, linguists and human language technology applications. By strengthening language resources for South Africa’s multilingual landscape, she is helping ensure that local languages continue to have a meaningful place in the digital future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on her journey, Tanja regards completing her PhD as one of her proudest achievements, teaching her the value of perseverance and following her passion. She also credits balancing the many roles required in both her professional and personal life with helping her discover resilience and adaptability she never knew she possessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In line with this year’s National Women’s Month theme, “Building Resilient Economies for All”<\/em>, Tanja believes women bring unique perspectives to research and problem-solving that strengthen innovation and create more inclusive solutions. She sees diversity as one of science’s greatest strengths, reminding us that every perspective has a valuable role to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her advice to young women considering careers in science is both simple and powerful: “If you are passionate about what you do, you will find a way. Stay curious and open-minded and you will succeed.”<\/em> Looking ahead, Tanja hopes her work will continue empowering others to create technologies that make a lasting difference for South Africa’s languages and their place in the digital world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Scholar: <\/em>https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?hl=en&user=VSKRw2EAAAAJ&view_op=list_works<\/a>
ORCID: <\/em>https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1455-1941<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LinkedIn: https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/tanjagaustadvanzaanen\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: Tshego Rapoo-Maloyi<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

21 August 2026 Across South Africa, women in science and research are helping shape a more inclusive digital future, one in which our languages, knowledge and communities are represented. Their contributions may take many forms, but together they are helping ensure that technological progress leaves no language behind. For Tanja Gaustad, a fascination with language […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[741,733,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846","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\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12851,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846\/revisions\/12851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sadilar.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}