Sharma Grover, Aditi, Gerhard B. Van Huyssteen, and M. W. Pretorius. 2011. “A technology audit: Human language technologies (HLT) R&D in South Africa.” Proceedings of the Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET 2011), Portland, Oregon, USA.
Sharma Grover, Van Huyssteen & Pretorius 2011b
English: BLaRK, human language technology, human language technology audit, language audit, language resource infrastructure, language resource management, language resources, resource-scarce languages, South Africa, technology audit
Afrikaans: BLaRK, hulpbronskaars tale, mensetaaltegnologie, mensetaaltegnologieoudit, Suid-Afrika, taalhulpbron, taalhulpbronbestuur, taalhulpbroninfrastruktuur, taaloudit, tegnologieoudit
English: South Africa (SA) epitomises diversity; with the nation boasting eleven official languages. The field of human language technology (HLT) can play a vital role in bridging the digital divide and thus has been recognised as a priority area by the South African government. The current HLT landscape in South Africa consists mostly of a relatively young research and development (R&D) community; the government and a handful of private sector companies. A key challenge is the perceived fragmentation of the R&D activities in this domain; there is insufficient codified knowledge about the currently available South African HLT language resources (LRs) and applications. In this paper we describe a national technology audit we undertook for the South African HLT landscape. The objective of our study was to codify and present a profile of HLT components in the South African HLT R&D environment. We present the technology audit process employed; which involved various data collection methods such as expert consultations; workshops and questionnaires. We also describe the complementary approaches used to analyse the status of the landscape; such as the detailed inventories of HLTs available across South Africa’s eleven languages and a series of indexes developed to provide a landscape overview. We found that a number of HLT LRs are available in South Africa but are of a very basic and exploratory nature and there are many areas that lie fallow in terms of the variety; number; technology maturity and accessibility of HLT items.
Afrikaans:
In: English
On: South African languages