Mzansi Taal

Join Prof Thabo Ditsele and Mthethwa for the 'My Taal, My Identity Seminar.'

Unisa - Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Unisa College of Human Sciences

Taljard,Prinsloo,Goosen-Creating electronic resources for African languages:challenges&opportunities

The availability of electronic resources for African languages is a burning issue, despite many (successful) efforts of African language linguists and computational linguists to extend the pool of resources needed for Human Language Technology applications. HLT applications are dependent on large quantities of machine-readable data, and one strategy for the collection of such data is digitization of existing resources. Digitization is the conversion of analogue text, video and audio material into a digital format which would allow downstream processing. The purpose of our presentation is to provide an overview of the tools, procedures, standards and best practices which we have utilized in our digitization effort. We contextualize our work within a specific environment, which is capacity and time constrained, and also less resourced with regard to technical skills. With regard to the digitization of text, we pay particular attention to our selection of OCR software, with the specific orthographies of the South African languages in mind. We furthermore demonstrate that cleaning of OCRed material is a scalable process, depending on the intended use of such material. We also briefly describe the processes followed for the digitization of video and audio material, which are to a certain extent less challenging than digitizing textual material. One of the main challenges for making electronic resources available on open access platforms, which would maximize their usability for potential users, is copyright, therefore a brief discussion on salient copyright issues is included in the presentation. Lastly, we explore the possibilities of collaboration with interested parties. shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

Taljard,Prinsloo,Goosen-Creating electronic resources for African languages:challenges&opportunities The availability of electronic resources for African languages is a burning issue, despite many (successful) efforts of African language linguists and comput...

WI 15 Academic Integrity for Students Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 15 Academic Integrity for Students Sign Language

WI 14 Referencing Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 14 Referencing Sign Language

WI 13 Clarity and accuracy Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 13 Clarity and accuracy Sign Language

WI 12 Developing a convincing voice Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 12 Developing a convincing voice Sign Language

WI 11 Paraphrasing Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 11 Paraphrasing Sign Language

WI 10 Source integration Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 10 Source integration Sign Language

WI 09 Introduction to referencing Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 09 Introduction to referencing Sign Language

WI 08 Discourse markers Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 08 Discourse markers Sign Language

WI 07 Introduction to argument structure Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 07 Introduction to argument structure Sign Language

WI 06 Introduction and conclusion Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 06 Introduction and conclusion Sign Language

WI 05 Structure of a paragraph Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 05 Structure of a paragraph Sign Language

WI 04 Academic writing Sign Language

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 04 Academic writing Sign Language

An NLP method in the corpus analysis of Central Kurdish definiteness marker - Hiwa Asadpour

In this study, Regular Expression (Regex) is used to improve searching techniques in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Regex is a string of text in which a user is allowed to create patterns which can be useful for text matching, locating, and managing. The aim was to raise the performance of NLP for response generation, i.e., Natural Language Generation (NLG). The analysis and the performance based on Regex shows that this method is very useful especially by providing a large number of patterns for matching. Patterns which include definite markers in Kurdish have many forms and our analysis shows that Regex is very useful to identify and detect them. Our findings indicate that Regex seem to be efficient enough to extract relevant response in Kurdish free speech data. For example, using Regex was helpful by reducing stemming and match all type of searches which look like similar. shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

An NLP method in the corpus analysis of Central Kurdish definiteness marker - Hiwa Asadpour In this study, Regular Expression (Regex) is used to improve searching techniques in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Regex is a string of text in which a ...

Thea Pitman - CELCE: Playing Green Games: micha cárdenas’s Sin Sol / No Sun

In this talk, we begin by introducing the aims and objectives of the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems. Thea Pitman will then present a sample project which brings together digital and environmental humanities. The paper seeks to explore the affordances of certain new media applications for generating environmental affect, and hence possibly effect, in those who use them. It specifically aims to examine the use of augmented reality (AR) and movement/space-sensitive technologies in the science-fiction, climate-fiction, mobile art game Sin Sol / No Sun (2018-2020), made by Latina media and performance artist and theorist micha cárdenas and her team at the Critical Realities Studio, University of California, Santa Cruz. Sidestepping arguments about the nature and degree of immersivity afforded by different media and how this may, or may not, correlate with environmental engagement, it focuses instead on questions of embodiment and the potential for the development of ‘aura’ in spaces mediated by AR, as outlined by Bolter et al. (2006), and how these may potentially help promote pro-environmental affect. More specifically it argues that Sin Sol contrives to restore the aura of our environment in a relational way, through a design that is purposefully open to the player’s auratic free associations. It seeks to demonstrate this by means of a provisional, personal, scenographic (Thornett 2020) account of my multi-sited attempts to experience the game to try to tease out the implications of this kind of ecopoetics. shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

Thea Pitman - CELCE: Playing Green Games: micha cárdenas’s Sin Sol / No Sun In this talk, we begin by introducing the aims and objectives of the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems. Thea Pitman will then present ...

WI 01 Task analysis - Xitsonga

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 01 Task analysis - Xitsonga

WI 07 Introduction to argument structure - Sesotho sa Leboa

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 07 Introduction to argument structure - Sesotho sa Leboa

WI 06 Introduction and conclusion - Sesotho sa Leboa

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 06 Introduction and conclusion - Sesotho sa Leboa

WI 05 Structure of a paragraph - Sesotho sa Leboa

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 05 Structure of a paragraph - Sesotho sa Leboa

WI 04 Academic writing - Sesotho sa Leboa

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 04 Academic writing - Sesotho sa Leboa

WI 03 Searching for information - Sesotho sa Leboa

shared via The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)

WI 03 Searching for information - Sesotho sa Leboa