TalkaSoft - Keeping Nigerian languages alive online

Submitted by sokari on 5 May, 2008 - 16:32.
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Africa is blessed with hundreds of languages (Nigeria alone has about 300 - not dialects but languages).  With the ever expanding use of the internet and other media and use of Western languages, many of our indigenous languages are in danger of being lost forever.  

TalkaSoft - Soro is a Nigerian initiative consisting of software which simultaneously translates from English into Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.

 It is anticipated that SORO will help to reduce communication barriers among Nigerians and enhance business and personal relationships.


The application also includes a lifestyle information library which is similar to an electronic document management system. This allows the storage and retrieval of any electronic files into SORO. Images, pictures, video recordings and any other files can be stored.

ALT-i is another language technology project promoting ICTs in African languages. The aim of the ALT-i project is to

appropriate various aspects of Human Language Technology (HTL) such as speech synthesis, speech recognition, natural language understanding, machine translation and many others for human-human and human-machine communication in African Languages for the unfolding information society.

At the moment it appears to be limited to Yoruba allowing users to send SMS mesages in Yoruba and will soon include a Yoruba chat feature.  

Both projects are so important if we are to increase and widen internet usage as well as generally to promote Africa's many languages.  I cannot count the number of times people have asked me "Do you speak Nigerian" not realising we have so many languages none of which is called Nigerian. That aside it is just so much more comfortable reading in one's own language than in English or French. 

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