SADiLaR Activities and Projects

Activities

2025 Conference presentations

  • UCT International Mother Tongue Day Celebrations – Towards a digital future for our Languages​ – (Mr Juan Steyn) – Presentation

2025 Conference workshops and tutorials and other events

  • LT4All 2025 Conference on Advancing Humanism through Language Technologies – Represented by Prof Menno van Zaanen and Ms Nomsa Skosana – More information
  • Xu Language Conference,Platfontein, 11 April 2025
  • Ipokelleng Career Day, Mashaeng Location, Fouriesburg, 12 April 2025
  • The 5th MASA Career Expo 2025, Limpopo, 10 May 2025
  • The Terminology Curation Workshop, CPUT, 15 May 2025
  • The European Conference on African Studies Conference (ECAS), Prague, 25-28 June 2025
  • Externship programme day for the Department of Languages, Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics students, University of Johannesburg, 12 June 2025.
  • The Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (SALALS) hosts an international conference, Gqeberha, 25-27 June 2025.
  • The 17th Biennial Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguists (IAFLL), University of the Western Cape,30 June- 4 July 2025.
  • AFRILEX – The 29th International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography, 2 July – 5 July 2025
  • The 29th International Afrilex conference, being held at UWC, 1 – 5 July 2025.
  • The 7th DIRISA Annual National Research Data Workshop, 2 July – 3 July 2025
  • The LiASA Library Day celebration at UNISA, 10 July 2025
  • The Digital Humanities Conference 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal, 14-18 July 2025.
  • The FDCR: Foundational Digital Capabilities 2025, Mini-DH-IGNITE Workshop, Durban, 15 July – 18 July
  • The DH-IGNITE Workshop Series: Building Digital Humanities Capacity in SA, NWU, Potchefstroom Campus 21 July 2025
  • The G20 Conference, Interaction of Culture and Climate side event, Cape Town, 25 July 2025
  • The South African Association for Language Teaching (SAALT) 2025 conference, Skukuza, South Africa, from 28-31 July 2025.
  • The 3rd Indigenous Languages and the Media Seminar, University of Limpopo, 14 August 2025
  • The Linguistic Society of South Africa Conference (LSSA), TUT, 19- 22 August 2025
  • International Language Conference Returns to Kimberley, Sol Plaatje University (SPU), 27 -29 August 2025
  • UNESCO Digital Learning Week, France, 2–5 September 2025
  • Africa International Teaching Week, 31 August – 5 September 2025
  • VUT Teaching and Learning Conference 2025, 9 – 11 September 2025
  • Nineteenth Annual SASRIM conference by the Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 26-28 September 2025
  • Women Leaders in Higher Education Summit, 24 September – 25 September 2025
  • NWU Language Awareness Week (LAW), Mafikeng Campus, 22-30 September 2025
  • Digital Research Methodology Workshop, 25 September 2025
  • Vaal University of Technology (VUT) Translanguaging Workshop, 29 September 2025
  • UNISA Node Digital Humanities Symposium, University of South Africa OR Tambo Building, UNISA Pretoria, 3 October 2025
  • Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Language Workshop, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Gate 08, UNITE Building, 14-15 October 2025
  • SAHUDA Conference 2025, Walter Sisulu University, 22-24 October 2025
  • Vaal University of Technology (VUT) Digitisation Workshop, VUT, 23 October 2025
  • ESCALATOR Flagship Programme: Enthusiast Track Meeting, 27 October 2025
  • Symposium: Research Software for Discovery & Innovation, University of Cape Town, 4 November 2025
  • DHASA Virtual Participation, 10-14 November 2025
  • RAIL 2025 – Sixth Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages, CSIR International Convertion Centre, 10 November 2025
  • ESCALATOR Executive Track Event, CSIR International Convertion Centre, 14 November 2025
  • Science Forum Exhibition, CSIR International Convertion Centre, 24-27 November 2025
  • The Second International Conference on Languages, Multilingualism, and Decolonization Practices in Higher Education, University of the Free State- Bloemfontein campus, 25-27 November 2025
  • Centre for High Performance Computing Conference, Century City Conference Centre, 30 November 2025- 3 December 2025

2024 Conference presentations

  • AFRILEX – Role of SADiLaR: advice on formats, backups, licensing, software, platforms; Community of Practice – Reflections (Mr Juan Steyn and Dr Friedel Wolff) – PDF Presentation
  • AFRILEX – Making sense of kuningi using a corpus linguistic analysis (Prof Langa Khumalo) – PDF Presentation
  • AFRILEX – Corpus-based dictionaries for low-resource languages (Ms Mmasibidi Setaka & Prof Menno van Zaanen) – PDF Presentation
  • Global AI Conference – Multilingualism: A case of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources in developing language resources (Ms Rooweither Mabuya) – PDF Presentation
  • Global Virtual Forum Summer School – African Digital Humanities and the Ethics of AI (Ms Andiswa Bukula) – PDF Presentation
  • Southern African Folkore Society – Digitisation as a Catalyst for Preserving Xhosa Oral Literature and Histories in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Ms Andiswa Bukula) – PDF Presentation

2024 Conference workshops and tutorials and other events

  • UCT Language Indaba– Language Resources as Enablers (Prof Langa Khumalo) – PDF Presentation
  • SADC Open Science Workshop – “Democratising Knowledge through Open Science“ (Prof Langa Khumalo) – PDF Presentation
  • Pre-conference Workshop – Towards a sustainable National Term Bank for the official languages of South Africa: Collaboration vs Fragmentation (Prof Justus Roux, Prof Rufus Gouws,….) – PDF Presentation
  • DH-IGNITE @ ALASA 2024– (Ms Jessica Mabaso, Dr Muzi Matfunjwa, Dr Respect Mlambo, Ms Rooweither Mabuya) – PDF Presentation
  • Pre-conference Workshop (SAALT)- Assessment literacy and the matter of enhancing translation practices of assessment tools (Prof Tobie Van Dyk) – PDF Presentation
  • SALALS Pre-conference Workshop – Introduction to Text Analysis Tools (Dr Muzi Matfunjwa and Dr Respect Mlambo)

DH Colloquia

SADiLaR organizes monthly Digital Humanities colloquia. These typically take place on Wednesdays (in the middle of the month) from 10:00 to 11:00 SAST. During these DH colloquia a wide variety of topics are discussed, mostly on content related to Digital Humanities, sometimes focusing more on the techniques or methodologies used, sometimes focusing more on the applications or application areas.

The DH colloquia are part of Escalator’s Explorer track. You can find more information on Escalator here: https://escalator.sadilar.org/, on Escalator’s championship programme here: https://escalator.sadilar.org/champions/overview/, and on the Explorer track within Escalator’s championship programme here: https://escalator.sadilar.org/champions/explorer/. Also check out the other tracks within the Escalator championship programme as there may be tracks directly related to your interests. If you want to be a member of the Digital Humanities community, you may also want to consider joining the DHCSSza Slack. This page will provide more information on how to join (this is also free): https://escalator.sadilar.org/connect/.

If you have suggestions for speakers at the DH colloquium (or if you want to speak yourself), or if you want to provide feedback, please do not hesitate to contact Prof Menno van Zaanen: menno.vanzaanen@nwu.ac.za.

2025

2024

SWiP Events

2025

Workshops

  • North West University: 1 – 4 December 2025
  • University of Cape Town: 7 – 8 October 2025
  • University of Pretoria: 29 – 30 September 2025
  • Mangosuthu University of Technology: 16 – 17 September 2025
  • North West University: 1 – 4 December 2025
  • University of Johannesburg: 8 – 9 July 2025
  • University of Mpumalanga: 24 – 25 April 2025
  • University of Limpopo: 6 – 7 May 2025
  • University of Eswatini: 19 – 24 May 2025

2024

Current Projects

SADiLaR HUB Projects/ Programmes 

ESCALATOR (Digital Humanities & Capacity Development)

ESCALATOR is SADiLaR’s flagship capacity development programme, designed to grow an inclusive and active South African community of practice in Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences. 

Through strategic partnerships and tailored training initiatives, ESCALATOR provides researchers, students, and educators with the skills and resources needed to engage with digital and computational methods in humanities and social sciences research. 

SADiLaR NWU DH OER Project 

The Digital Humanities Open Educational Resource Champions project Champions the creation and use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Digital Humanities. 

SWiP Project

SADiLaR-Wikipedia-PanSALB (SWiP) is a collaborative initiative by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), the free encyclopaedia (Wikipedia), and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). 

The SWiP project was officially launched on the 22nd of September 2023, at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. Overall objectives of the projects are to bring together communities of language practice, such as universities, language directorates, and language entities, practically to advance and celebrate the use of South African Languages and to encourage language communities of practice to actively participate in contributing to the free encyclopaedia (Wikipedia). 

Higher Education Sector Support Programme

The design of SADiLaR’s Higher Education Sector Support Programme (HESSP) is directly informed by the eight most urgent challenges identified in the 2023 National Language Resources Audit. These areas represent sector-wide priorities essential for the successful implementation of the Language Policy Framework for Public Higher Education Institutions. 

The Higher Education Support Programme is aimed at building capacity, enhancing project execution, and fostering resources and infrastructure development across South African universities. 

LwimiLinks Platform 

LwimiLinks is a national open-source platform for the coordination of multilingual terminological resources and projects in South Africa. The terminological information can be consulted by a variety of users, e.g., students, academics, and language practitioners. Authoritative bodies and individuals are encouraged to submit their resources and information on their projects in terminology that will be made available on LwimiLinks’ platform.  

Xitsonga Voyant Tools Corpora Project 

his project aims to develop monolingual corpora using Nthavela newspapers published between 2012 and 2023. Nthavela is an indigenous African language newspaper written in Xitsonga, founded by Dunisani Ntswanwisi under Nhluvuko Media Communication.  

SADiLaR NODE Projects

Extended Digitisation of Language Resources

Ongoing digitisation of 11 of South Africa’s official languages, including texts, audio, audio-visual and born-digital material. Focuses on the preservation of invaluable language (and cultural) resources for the African languages by digitising textual, audio and audio-visual material, and providing language communities with access to these digital resources via the SADiLaR repository.  

Early Language Development Norms 

Building human and research capacity through obtaining early language development norms for 8-to-30-month speakers of South Africa’s 11 spoken official languages.  

Spelling Checkers for 10 SA Languages 

Packaging of all 10 of the spelling checkers and hyphenators for South African languages as one installer. This installer is available to any person or business for download from the SADiLaR website, free of charge.  

Linguistic Resources & Core Technologies for South African Languages 

Data is the key to the most recent developments in the field of Human Language Technology (HLT) and Machine Learning, e.g., Deep Learning. The South African languages have always been under-resourced due to various reasons. With the conversion of data for 9 South African languages and extra annotation of data for 10 South African languages, this project makes a significant contribution in the availability of high quality linguistically annotated resources for the development of HLT technologies, but also for the further study of South African languages by (corpus) linguists, digital humanists, etc.

Enabling Localised Language Technology Applications Phase II: Developing Nguni computational grammars and resources  

The purpose of this project is to use the existing isiZulu Grammatical Framework (GF) resource grammar to not only extend computational resources for isiZulu but also to bootstrap two new resource grammars within the Nguni language family, namely isiXhosa and Siswati, thus enabling the development of similar computational resources for these  languages.  

Phase 3: Harvesting existing sources of speech data for HLT development in South Africa 

Significant progress has been made in developing the language resources required for speech technology development over the last decade. Despite these efforts, however, the South African languages remain under-resourced compared to many other languages. While recent studies have shown some success in utilising resources from well-resourced languages in conjunction with resources from under-resourced languages to develop speech technologies, data in the target language remains important for successful technology development. This project aims to harvest and curate speech data for 10 official languages to support technology development. 

African Wordnet and Multilingual Literary Terminology Development

The African Wordnet (AfWN) and Multilingual Literary Terminology (MLT) development project concerns the development of language resources in the form of wordnets and a literary termbank for various South African languages. 

Towards Digital Language Resources for South African Sign Language 

This pilot project aims to expand the availability of digital language resources for South African Sign Language (SASL). The initiative will connect with diverse SASL stakeholders in collaboration with the Child Language Development Node of SADiLaR and HandLab at Stellenbosch University. Importantly, the project is co-led by members of the Deaf community, ensuring community-centered development and inclusivity. 

Reducing the Educational Achievement Gap through Community-Led Technology (REACT): 
Enhancing Early Language Development in Under-Resourced Environments 

The REACT project addresses the critical challenge of under-resourced languages in South Africa and their impact on early childhood language development and educational achievement. By leveraging Human Language Technologies (HLTs) and community-led approaches, the project aims to enhance early language development (ages 0–3) starting with isiXhosa- and isiZulu-speaking communities, ultimately reducing educational disparities and contributing to multilingual equity.