SADiLaR showcases research during the winter conference season

SADiLaR researchers and operational teams presented their research and organised digital humanities workshops at various conferences and events held across South Africa from April to July 2024.

The role of SADiLaR: advice on formats, backups, licensing, software, and communities of practice

Professor Langa Khumalo, the executive director of SADiLaR, Dr. Friedel Wolf, the technical manager of SADiLaR, Mr. Juan Steyn, the operations director of SADiLaR, and Ms. Mmasibidi Setaka, the digital humanities researcher of seSotho, attended the 28th International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography (Afrilex) from July 1st to July 4th, 2024. This took place at the University of Pretoria where SADiLaR facilitated a digital humanities pre-conference workshop themed “Towards a Sustainable National Term Bank for the Official Languages of South Africa: Collaboration vs Fragmentation,” in which Mr Steyn and Dr Wolff presented a talk titled “Role of SADiLaR: advice on formats, backups, licensing, software, platforms; Community of Practice – Reflections.”

Understanding the concept of “through corpus linguistic analysis”

During the AFRILEX conference, Prof Khumalo, who is also the Afrilex president, shared an intriguing and heartfelt presentation titled “Making sense of Kuningi using a corpus linguistic analysis.”

In 2023, the Pan South African Languages Board (PanSALB) named the word “kuningi” as the inaugural South African word of the year for social media. According to PanSALB, the word reflects real language use. “Kuningi” is an IsiZulu word meaning “it’s a lot”. Prof Khumalo’s study analyses the meaning of “kuningi” using a corpus linguistic approach, two corpora drawn from the most popular IsiZulu newspapers, Isolezwe (ACISO) and Ilanga (ACILA), to comparatively analyse the standard use and meaning of the word.

Ms Mmasibidi Setaka observed that Afrilex 2024 was very interesting as she met academics with the same interests as her who were willing to share their knowledge and expertise.

“I listened to many papers that were interesting and thought-provoking. My highlight was the preconference workshop ‘Towards a Sustainable National Term Bank for the Official Languages of South Africa: Collaboration vs Fragmentation that SADiLaR supported. It highlighted many crucial points that could see official languages being preserved and promoted at a higher level.”

Ms Setaka’s presentation was on corpus-based dictionaries for low-resource languages as an idea for her PhD proposal, for which she gained valuable feedback from experts who attended the conference.

The lexicographic treatment of kingship terminologies in bilingual dictionaries

The African Language Association of Southern Africa’s (ALASA) 25th international conference ran from 8 to 12 July 2024 and was hosted by the University of KwaZulu Natal in collaboration with PanSALB in Durban. There, the SADiLaR team ran a pre-conference workshop which entailed engaging workshop sessions on the latest trends and techniques in digital humanities and computational social sciences.

The workshop was aimed at sparking connections, sharing ideas, collaborating on future projects, and hearing from pioneers in the field about their groundbreaking work and future visions.

Ms. Jessica Mabaso who led the organising team of the DH Ignite pre-conference workshop comments, “Seeing attendees enthusiastically network and discuss the potential of digital approaches in language studies was particularly gratifying. Overall, the workshop successfully introduced many scholars to digital humanities and set an energetic tone for the main ALASA Conference, highlighting the growing importance of digital scholarship in South African languages and cultures,” SADiLaR researchers; Dr Muzi Matfunjwa and Dr Respect Mlambo co-presented a collaborative paper titled “The lexicographic treatment of kingship terminologies in bilingual dictionaries.”

Enhancing translation practices of assessment tools

SADiLaR is pleased to have collaborated with the South African Association for Language Teaching (SAALT) again this year and to have supported the pre-conference workshop for language professionals and lecturers which focused on assessment literacy and the matter of enhancing translation practices of assessment tools. This workshop was facilitated by Prof Tobie Van Dyk, lead of the higher education programme seconded at SADiLaR and director at ICELDA.

Prof Van Dyk explains as follows: “Participants were exposed to basic test and assessment principles such as purpose, reliability, validity, and fairness. Concerning translation of such materials, key principles and best practices were explored, common challenges were considered, and hands-on activities were used to enhance proficiency in this specialised and multidisciplinary area.”

Introduction to text analysis tools

The annual conference of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (SALALS) was hosted by the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Languages, Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics from 25 - 27 June 2024. During the conference, Drs. Muzi Matfunjwa and Respect Mlambo presented their collaborated paper, “Introduction to Text Analysis Tools”, under the conference theme of “Navigating and Embracing Language, Linguistics, and Technology – Future Directions in the Era of Digital Humanities and the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions (4IR / 5IR).”

Education, literacy, and artificial intelligence

On 4 July 2024, SADiLaR was well-represented at the Language and Education Global Conference in Kenya where digital humanities researcher in isiZulu, Ms Rooweither Mabuya, appeared as a panelist discussing the topic “Education, Literacy, and AI.”

African digital humanities and the ethics of artificial intelligence

SADiLaR had a strong presence at the five-day July Global Southern Forum which was hosted by Nelson Mandela University in the Eastern Cape from 1 to 5 July 2024. SADiLaR’s digital humanities researcher specialising in isiXhosa, Ms Andiswa Bukula, co-presented a talk titled “African Digital Humanities and the Ethics of AI.”

Ms Bukula reports: “During this forum, I had an opportunity to be part of a panel discussion. I was approached by the forum organisers to speak on the ‘Overview of SADiLaR’s resources and services supporting African languages and digital humanities research’. The three-hour panel discussion went well with a great audience interaction. Post the event, the panel discussion has been invited to submit a book chapter, which is a great way to share all that was discussed during the panel discussion.”