Quick follow-up on last week's post on Ebola and health information in African languages, to share some more information about initiatives on ebola education and reporting in African languages.
Following tweets on the previous post, there was additional information via Twitter on some videos in Nigerian languages:
A GooglePlay app "About Ebola" is available in English, Jola (Diola in French spelling), Krio, Liberian English, and Wolof.
There appears to be significant information on ebola in Fula, notably on pulaar.org, including a recent long article "Ebola Hol no haɓtortee?" (ebola, how can it be fought/countered?). Peeral Media has a short piece in Fula on Facebook, with a parallel English version. A 5-minute audio "Info sur Ebola en Pulaar/Fulfulde" is available on YouTube (accompanied by one graphic). Another example is a story on Voice of Nigeria about the Nigerian Hajj Commission's screening of pilgrims going to Mecca: "Hukuuma hijju Najeeriya wiɗitay hijooɓe Najeeriya."
In Guinea, Studio Hirondelle in collaboration with the rural radio network has produced radio programs on ebola in Fula (Peulh in French; the endonym in Guinea is Pular) and Malinké (a Manding language for which the endonym is Maninka or Maninkakan).
WHO and Athinkra
Athinkra LLC is coordinating translations of a FAQ on ebola provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Languages on its list so far include N'Ko (an alphabet for Manding), Vai (in its own script and Latin alphabet), and Fula (in the new Adlam script - more on the latter in another post). (Thanks to Coleman Donaldson for calling my attention to this.)
Rubric, Wikimedia ZA, and WikiProject Medicine
Further afield, there is a collaboration in South Africa among Rubric (a languages services company), Wikimedia ZA, and WikiProject Medicine (which has a Translation Task Force/Project) to translate ebola health info on Wikipedia into the official languages of that country.
Summary and thoughts
At this point it would seem very useful to have a way of monitoring such efforts and products with an eye to facilitating communication and sharing among them (particularly important, I'd argue, for cross-border and closely-related languages), reviewing material for accuracy, and building a data bank of medical translations in African languages about ebola and related public health topics.
Following tweets on the previous post, there was additional information via Twitter on some videos in Nigerian languages:
@babatabita Check @LensOnEbola for more #Ebola videos from #Nigeria, in #Yoruba, #Pidgin and #English. @donosborn #NgHlth
— Nigeria Health Watch (@nighealthwatch) September 5, 2014
The Nigerian language videos (YouTube) that I'm aware of so far are as follows (would appreciate more links from those who have them):- In Yoruba, "Owó Fifò," on hand washing
- In Pidgin, on ebola symptoms and what to do if one experiences them
A GooglePlay app "About Ebola" is available in English, Jola (Diola in French spelling), Krio, Liberian English, and Wolof.
There appears to be significant information on ebola in Fula, notably on pulaar.org, including a recent long article "Ebola Hol no haɓtortee?" (ebola, how can it be fought/countered?). Peeral Media has a short piece in Fula on Facebook, with a parallel English version. A 5-minute audio "Info sur Ebola en Pulaar/Fulfulde" is available on YouTube (accompanied by one graphic). Another example is a story on Voice of Nigeria about the Nigerian Hajj Commission's screening of pilgrims going to Mecca: "Hukuuma hijju Najeeriya wiɗitay hijooɓe Najeeriya."
In Guinea, Studio Hirondelle in collaboration with the rural radio network has produced radio programs on ebola in Fula (Peulh in French; the endonym in Guinea is Pular) and Malinké (a Manding language for which the endonym is Maninka or Maninkakan).
WHO and Athinkra
Athinkra LLC is coordinating translations of a FAQ on ebola provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Languages on its list so far include N'Ko (an alphabet for Manding), Vai (in its own script and Latin alphabet), and Fula (in the new Adlam script - more on the latter in another post). (Thanks to Coleman Donaldson for calling my attention to this.)
Rubric, Wikimedia ZA, and WikiProject Medicine
Further afield, there is a collaboration in South Africa among Rubric (a languages services company), Wikimedia ZA, and WikiProject Medicine (which has a Translation Task Force/Project) to translate ebola health info on Wikipedia into the official languages of that country.
Summary and thoughts
At this point it would seem very useful to have a way of monitoring such efforts and products with an eye to facilitating communication and sharing among them (particularly important, I'd argue, for cross-border and closely-related languages), reviewing material for accuracy, and building a data bank of medical translations in African languages about ebola and related public health topics.
3 comments:
The back story on the "About Ebola" app was published on the Code Innovation site on 17 April 2014 by Elie Calhoun. Evidently the designers tried to get this app in the iTunes store also, but without luck.
A follow-up by Nathanial Calhoun was published on the same site on 6 August under the title "Google doesn’t really care about African language content." This raises some larger issues about support for information in African languages on ebola, and for localization in African languages generally, that I'd like to come back to.
A workshop to translate Ebola health information was held in Southern Senegal in October 2014. The first material to be translated was a poster into four languages: Bandial, Gusilay, Jola Fonyi and Manjaku.
http://www.sil.org/about/news/ebola-resources-translated-senegalese-languages
Thanks Dave. This is helpful and will fit in a forthcoming post on ebola information in Senegalese languages. In the meantime, I just tweeted the link.
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