SADiLaR

Last updated

SADiLaR
Formation2016;8 years ago (2016)
HeadquartersBuildings F16 C & F16 D North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Executive Director
Prof Langa Khumalo
Website https://sadilar.org/en/

SADiLaR (the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources), is a Department of Science and Innovation-sponsored initiative to create and manage digital resources and software supporting research and development in digital language resources in South Africa. [1] [2]

Contents

History

Founded in 2016, and hosted at the North-West University, [3] SADiLaR aims to provide a resource centre that simulates, enables, manages and distributes digital research related to all of South Africa's official languages. [4] It functions both as host and as a hub for a number of nodes, including other universities, research centres and public archives.

Nodes

The nodes [5] that are linked to SADiLaR include;

DH-OER

SADiLaR launched [9] the DH-OER Champions [10] project to stimulate activism and research around the use and/or creation of OER for the digital humanities (DH) at universities in South Africa. [11] The inaugural DH-OER cohort offered stakeholders the opportunity observe how the various open champions (academics, researchers, and students) from other disciplines, institutions, and regions in South Africa (and beyond) can make use of OER in their disciplines. The results of these DH OER projects are listed on the Educator Track page on the SADiLaR site.

Higher Education Support

SADiLaR are engaged in the systematic creation of relevant digital text, speech and multimodal resources [12]

Collaborations

SADiLaR is involved in a collaboration between Wikipedia and the Pan South African Language Board. Together they launched the SWiP collaboration [13] at the University of South Africa in September 2023. SWiP advocates for equality among all indigenous languages and encouraging languages communities in South Africa to become more visible on Wikipedia and post information in their own language. [14]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital humanities</span> Area of scholarly activity

Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.

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References

  1. "Government Establishes a New Digital Centre to Promote Indigenous Languages". www.dst.gov.za.
  2. Gugu Lourie (2019). "South Africa to Launch Centre for Digital Language Resources". Archived from the original on 20 November 2023.
  3. "SADiLaR takes the lead in digitising establishing 11 national languages | news.nwu.ac.za". news.nwu.ac.za.
  4. Linda Stokman (2018). "South Africa joins CLARIN ERIC as observer".
  5. "SADiLaR Nodes". sadilar.org/. 2020.
  6. "Building human language technologies for South African Languages". CSIR Science Scope. 14 (1): 37–38. 2019 via Sabinet.
  7. "WATCH: SADiLaR digitisation node at UP developing SA languages 'in an African way, developed by Africans for Africans'". www.up.ac.za/. 2020.
  8. Naidu-Hoffmeester, Rivonia (2020). "Developing digital African language resources". www.up.ac.za/.
  9. "Launching the Digital Humanities Open Educational Resources Champions Initiative – SADiLaR".
  10. "The Educator Track".
  11. "DH OER Champions".
  12. https://news.nwu.ac.za/sites/news.nwu.ac.za/files/files/Robert.Balfour/Address%202019_10_18.UNISA.Impact-of-4IR-on-indigenous-languages.doc
  13. "SWiP project to champion SA's indigenous languages online". news.nwu.ac.za.
  14. Birgit Ottermann. "SWiP project to champion SA's indigenous languages online".