Health info in African languages, on 2 non-African sites

Here are quick reviews of two websites - one Australian the other American - that have health information in numerous world languages, including a number from Africa. Both are primarily intended to serve immigrant communities. This post will then return briefly to the theme of the benefits of systematically sharing and improving of health related information composed in or translated into African languages.

Health Translations

Health Translations is a website maintained by the government of the state of Victoria in Australia.  It has information (mainly documents such as fact sheets and flyers, from what I can tell, some with illustrations) on over 80 topics in a total of almost 100 languages or language varieties (although not all information is in every language, and some languages have few items).

The African languages for which there are materials include: Afrikaans; Akan; Amharic; Arabic; Bemba; Dinka; Juba Arabic; Kirundi; Krio; Lingala; Nuer; Oromo; Shona; Somali; Sudanese Arabic (also listed as Sudanese); Swahili (Congolese); Swahili (Kenyan); and Tigrinya.

This is an impressive collection of materials from various sources, apparently all Australian, and in different formats. They appear to all be translations - a given material may be available in a few or quite a number of language versions. Navigating from the a click on the desired language on the list of languages (which helpfully includes both English & native names/scripts) to a particular topical resource requires interacting with screens in English - not surprising, but when one gets to the list of topics and resources in a particular language, the titles are only in English, and then on the list of languages in which a material is translated (this is a typical navigation sequence), the language names are in English (no native scripts used). So the resource appears intended to be used by or with help of professionals or others who can read English.

Source: Bushfire smoke & your health [am]

I'm not able to evaluate the quality of the translations, but noted French in Lingala (which may simply be typically used loanwords) and by chance an anomalous English word in an Amharic text (image).

All the several documents I viewed were PDFs, mainly text but some image (meaning the text cannot be searched or copied out for editing into other materials). Spot checking some non-Latin text, specifically Ethiopic/Ge'ez used for Amharic and Tigrinya, and complex Latin, specifically for Dinka, there were some issues with the text that would interfere with searches or copying out passages (such problems are not uncommon with PDF rendering, even when visually the PDF presents everything correctly and in its intended place).

Some Amharic text when copied out and pasted showed capital A for አ and E for እ in initial position (for example, here). The corresponding characters are appropriate, interestingly, but this makes search or reuse of such text problematic.

From original (l.); copy-pasted out (r.)
Source: Bushfire smoke ... [din]

The Dinka text sampled showed some typical problems with complex Latin in PDFs. Dinka is written with what I call in ALDA a "category 4" Latin orthography in that it includes extended Latin characters (aka modified letters) plus combining diacritics, sometimes together as in the open-o with diaeresis in the word "daiɣɔ̈kthai" (dioxide) featured on the left side of the image. Copying that word from the PDF and pasting it in a word processor or advanced text editor yielded the results on the right, missing one extended character and the combining diacritic on the other. This complicates any potential re-use of this text, but also means that document, folder, or web searches will not pick up words with such character combinations.

Will return to these issues, why they're important, and what to do about them in the last section of this post.

 

HealthReach

HealthReach: Health Information in Many Languages is a program of the US Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. It includes translations in 46 languages maintained on the MedinePlus site. A total of almost 350 topics are listed (although here too, not all information is in every language, and some languages have fewer items than others).

The African languages for which there are materials include: Amharic; Arabic; Oromo; Somali; Swahili; and Tigrinya, The native names of languages are featured on the list of languages, except oddly for Amharic and Tigrinya, which are transliterated into Latin ("amarunya" instead of አማርኛ, and "tigrinya" instead of ትግርኛ).

This also is an impressive collection from diverse sources, in this case American, but it is longer on topics and shorter on languages covered. The list of topics for each language also includes the titles in the language and its script - except again for Amharic and Tigrinya (not even transliterations) - as well as in English.

All materials checked were PDFs. There are no materials for African languages with complex Latin scripts.

As for non-Latin scripts, text in Arabic seems to behave as intended, from small samples. On the other hand, some Amharic text when copied out and pasted showed the same capital A for አ and E for እ observed above, plus O for ኦ (see here).  A Tigrinya document had a similar issue. So this issue may have to do with a problem in PDFs for handling a particular set of characters - አኡኢኣኤእኦኧ (representing glottal stop plus the range of vowels) - or a subset of them, which might be helpful to know when troubleshooting.

Health education materials and the "2Ds & 4Rs"

In highlighting aspects of public health messaging during the ebola epidemic in West Africa (2014-15), this blog suggested a systematic approach to sharing and improving materials that were developed and used in that context (with primary attention to text and images). A mnemonic - 2Ds & 4Rs - was put forth in October 2014, initially to explain the rationale for reposting and discussing various ebola education materials, but also as a way to capture the ideal cycle of utility of such production. Too often, materials are developed, used for a particular purpose, and then forgotten, when they could add to a growing living corpus of resources to tap for future work. This is important in any field and language, but arguably especially important in health, and for languages that have fewer resources and emerging terminologies / technical lexicons, such as many in Africa.

In that context I propose to use the 2Ds & 4Rs to consider the efforts represented by the two sites discussed above. Of the 6 elements of this model, the first three have to do more with the sharing and use of materials, and the last three with their longer term development and potential re-use. These are listed with brief explanations and what I see as relevance to the two sites:

• Dissemination (making materials available, including via multiple sources)
• Both sites bring together and post materials from diverse sources, increasing their exposure and access to them.
• Demonstration (showing how materials in African languages can be presented, including in cases where complex scripts are involved)
• Both sites show that African language materials can be presented on the same footing as other world languages.
• However, the HealthReach presentation does not use available technology to present the native names of Amharic and Tigrinya, or titles of materials in those languages.
• Reading (creating or translating text materials with attention to how they may be read aloud in groups or over local radio, which may be more likely scenarios for their use than the typical Western expectation of silent reading by individuals)
•  It appears that all or most of the materials from diverse sources compiled on the two sites are translations from English of technical descriptions and advice. It is not clear how well how well adapted they are for the range of uses and audiences they might serve.
• Review (written material - text - is well suited for review, comparison, and analysis; such material, especially in less resourced languages and on issues of public importance like health, should undergo such treatment)
• No information on how any of the materials may be or have been reviewed, either in the diverse organizations where they originated, or in the projects hosting the two websites. 
• Image PDFs, where these occur, do not lend themselves to processes of review.
• Text PDFs with problems in their encoding of non-Latin or complex Latin scripts, present problems for review.
• Revision (after review of materials, and in response to other information and feedback relevant to them, materials should undergo appropriate revisions in content, form of language, copyediting, and presentation)
• No information on any revisions of any of the materials.
• Issues cited under "Review" with image PDFs and with text PDFs that have encoding problems also hinder revision work.
• Re-use or re-purposing (text materials can be re-used or sections re-purposed)
• No information on re-use or re-purposing of any of the materials.

The two sites profiled above and the various health and medical education materials presented on them represent an important resource for fifteen African languages (and some varieties of two of those).

One additional question is whether such materials, intended primarily to serve needs of immigrants in Australia and the US, might be useful as is or with modifications, for speakers of the same languages in relevant African countries. Or in the reverse sense, whether any health extension materials from Africa might inform revision of these materials and development of new ones. A next step could be a for a site to begin to collect health materials in African languages from all sources.

There are many directions in which this could be taken, with the goals of improving availability, quality and utility of health education information in a range of African languages. One, for example, is linking with the longstanding WikiProject Med's Translation Task Force for development of articles in those African languages that have Wikipedias (such as Afrikaans, Akan, Amharic, Arabic, Kirundi, Lingala, Oromo, Shona, Somali, Swahili, and Tigrinya). Another might be connecting with efforts to advance development of standard terminologies. Still another might be to bring in human language technology, such as text to speech, so that materials designed and disseminated in text form could be accessible in audio via mobile devices.

Thanks to Charles Riley of Yale University for calling our attention to these two websites.

Breaking the "dialect barrier"*

You hear a lot about "language barrier" - a term that I for one would just as soon replace with "language divide" or "language gap" - but what about navigating the less daunting but sometimes trickier differences between dialects or varieties within a language or dialect continuum? Yet this must be common to the experience of many people around the world, including most of Africa.

Personally my biggest experience with this was transitioning in 1985 from Djenné, Mali, where as a Peace Corps volunteer I gained a certain competence in the Maasinankoore variety of Fulfulde, to Pita, Guinea, in the heart of the Pular-speaking Futa Jalon region. Actually it was unlike anything I've done before or since, even though I've encountered dialect differences more briefly elsewhere.

Making the transition was kind of fun - and occasionally funny. The biggest initial difference I found between Fula varieties has always been the greetings, but they are relatively simple to learn. Then there was keeping track of different verb endings, not making the initial consonant shifts in verbs, and a few other grammatical differences. Most of this was on the fly, but as I mentioned in an earlier posting, it did help me to have Sonja Fagerberg-Diallo's learning materials for both varieties of the language.

Then there were some differences in vocabulary - including some well-known (such as the first two below) and lesser known pitfalls:

• caggal = "back (anatomy)" or "after" in Maasinankoore, but cagga = "prostitute" in Pular
• ɓaawo = "back (anatomy)" or "after" in Pular, but ɓaawo = "female genitalia (very impolite)" in Maasinankoore
• pati = "don't" in Maasinankoore, but pati = "grandmother" in Pular
• kaani (pl. perfective of verb haanude) = "should" in Maasinankoore, but kaani = "ugly" in Pular

You can imagine that such differences could suddenly deflect a conversation into incomprehension or laughter.

Fortunately nothing I encountered in Futa Jalon was too extreme. As alluded to above, I spoke and listened, which is more or less how people from the region who move to a new area would bride a language or dialect gap. Except that I had a few advantages: One was that being a foreigner with any competence in the language was a bit of a novelty in Guinea at that time, so I think expectations were not high (and maybe some missteps were attributed to accent). I was also able to ask and get pointers from my Guinean co-workers in the community forestry project since they all also spoke French. And I was fortunate to have help of a local teacher, Amadou "Sernas" Bah, in going through an extensive Pular word list. (I had done something similar but more extensive in Djenné with Maasinankoore that led to the later Fulfulde Lexicon.)

The risk of meaning one thing but saying the opposite

I recall a Malian co-worker in Djenné, Boubey Touré, who came from Rharous in the Songhai area in the north of that country, but who never tried speaking his language (what Ethnologue classifies as Songhay, Koyraboro Senni) with speakers of the Djenné dialect of Songhai (a distinct variety of  Songhay, Koyra Chiini), for fear that some word he would say would would mean the opposite in local speech (as he put it). So he ended up mostly relying on Bambara in forestry extension work.

When I went to Futa Jalon, I actually encountered the kind of situation Boubey referred to, but in Fula. The accomplished (roughly past tense) negative ending for active voice verbs in Maasinankoore is pronounced -aayi (even though generally written -aali), wheras the future ending for active voice verbs in Pular is pronounced -ayi. Essentially the same sound. So coming from one background and not knowing, one could actually say a lot of things that mean almost the opposite in the other location.

The bigger lesson though is that an African extension worker like Boubey who is fluent in one language variety never had any training or materials to allow him to negotiate the dialect / language (variety) differences in his own country, while someone like me gets to go there as a Peace Corps volunteer, get all kinds of training for a second language, and then support and materials to transition to another variety of that language.

Greetings differ most markedly between dialects

I have much less experience with Manding varieties, but recall my first trip to the Bougouni area of Mali where people greeted me with "I ni se," a Bambara greeting I hadn't encountered before. It wasn't a different pronunciation of the widely used greeting, "I ni ce," and though it sounded disconcertingly close to the female response to greetings "Nse," it definitely wasn't that either. Then I realized this was the verb "se," to arrive. I ni se is a greeting on arrival. Welcome! Apparently this is common only in that region.

It is always the greetings that are the most different between varieties. One more example from Fula: In Maasinankoore one could say on parting, Alla hollu en ontuma (God show us another time), while in Pular I only ever heard a short form of that, En ontuma. Most other greetings are just different.

Thank you for your understanding

On a break from a PanAfrican Localisation workshop in Centurion (Tshwane), South Africa, Adel el Zaim, Dwayne Bailey and I took a walk over to a shopping area, and on the way out of one shop I looked back and read a sign "Dankie vir u ondersteuning." (What?) I asked Dwayne and he explained that it actually meant "Thank you for your support." English and Afrikaans are of course two separate though related languages, with some cognates, and evidently some faux amis as well. But this sort of example, even allowing for different spellings, of a concept ("under"+"standing") shifting meanings is something found between dialects as well.

Another example is from my move from Mali to Guinea: In Maasinankoore, the verb doomude (or doomugol) means simply to wait, but in Pular it has the sense of waiting around at mealtime to be invited to eat.

* Barrier or divide or gap?

Quick note on terminology. There is an advantage I think to using a "divide" or "gap" rather than "barrier" to describe the situation where lack of common language prevents or hampers communication. In effect what we're actually talking about is a "communication gap" in need of a common language "bridge" or learning some key differences between dialects to exchange ideas and information and do so accurately.

The gap/divide and bridge metaphor is I think quite powerful in portraying the problem and solution in the case of people with very different languages. In the case of dialects, the divide is not as wide or deep, and the problem is not as much inability to communicate, as running into mini-gaps such as differences in vocabulary or terms that are used differently. The knowledge need is more nuanced - figuring out what you know and don't know. So "dialect barrier" is no more apt here (I used it humorously in the title), but not sure of a better analogy.

Nelson Mandela and African languages

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. (Nelson Mandela)

As South Africa, and indeed the world, mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela, a remarkable leader who the New York Times called the "Peaceful Liberator of a Torn South Africa," here is a quick look at his legacy as concerns languages in Africa. Actually a very quick look, as I don't personally know much on the topic  and find relatively little on line, other than the well-known quote above and some details below (so hopefully more information can be filled in via comments or a future post).

Mandela's first language was Xhosa, an Nguni language very close to Zulu, which he apparently also spoke. He learned English in school, and it was in school where his biography says he met his first non-Xhosa friend, a Sesotho speaker. Later he learned Afrikaans while a prisoner on Robben Island. It seems Mandela was as much a product of a multilingual society as he was of a multiracial and multiethnic one..

The process* leading to the inclusion in the new constitution of all 11 of South Africa's main languages as "official" happened during the country's transition to majority rule. While I don't find any discussion of Mandela's direct involvement in that process, a fellow former prisoner at Robben Island who he knew well - Neville Alexander - was prominent in it. I'm not sure how South Africans would see it, but from afar, it seems that the officially multilingual policy of the country is part of Mandela's legacy.

Other thoughts...

A couple of other thoughts not related specifically to language upon reflecting about aspects of Nelson Mandela's legacy. First, the NY Times obit (referenced above) has this passage and quote in the context of discussing leadership style:

In his autobiography, Mr. Mandela recalled eavesdropping on the endless consensus-seeking deliberations of the tribal council and noticing that the chief worked "like a shepherd."
"He stays behind the flock," he continued, "letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

Reading the analogy, I am reminded on a literal level about a dismissive comment about Fulani pastoralists I heard from some American development experts while in Mali in the 1980s - to the effect that the herders spent their lives looking at the rear ends of cattle. There are a lot of problems with a statement like that of course (misunderstanding of pastoralism and herd behavior, attitudes regarding development,etc.), but taking it all back to the level of analogy and leadership, it has me thinking about how outsiders (primarily Westerners) conceive of or misunderstand community leadership and decision-making processes, not only in Africa but also in Asia.

Second, I came across an article about how in April 1994, the then new South African president Mandela surprised the outgoing president DeKlerk's official staff when he arrived and they did not know what to expect. The article continues, "he drifted to one end of the room and started shaking hands with every single person present. ... Many a staffer who never had the opportunity to speak to a president was dumbfounded by the personal attention they received from the living legend." Yet this seems, from my limited experience elsewhere on the continent to be considered good form when joining a meeting** - although not expected of a high status person. But as the article implies, this was an example of Mandela's style of leadership.

One wonders if, in the brief conversations Mandela had with the staffers that day, there were any exchanges in the diverse languages of the country...

---

* The following paper has a lot of this history: Beukes, Anne-Marie, "Language policy implementation in South Africa: How Kempton Park's great expectations are dashed in Tshwane," Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 38, 2008, pp. 1-26.
** It's a habit I personally got comfortable with after several years in West Africa. I remember in one gathering I joined shortly after returning to the US, realizing folks were dumbfounded as to why I, a living stranger, was shaking each person's hand.

Microsoft giving Africa LIP(s)

Where are we now with software localization in African languages? I'd like to try to take stock in several quick installments, beginning with desktop/laptop software and then moving to mobile devices. This post starts it off with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, due to no particular ordering - I just happened to come across something recently relating to Microsoft's (MS's) localization efforts.

MS's products are offered in diverse languages, but in what might be described as a tiered arrangement. A number of languages have fully localized versions - for MS Office 2013, for instance, there are by my count 40 such versions (which includes only Arabic among African languages, as well as the principal Eurphone languages used in Africa). But for other languages, MS's Local Language Program develops Language Interface Packs (LIPs) for Windows and Office. A LIP includes translations of about 80% of commands (the most frequently used), and is installed over another version, basically changing the language interface to the language of the LIP.

MS has added a number of African language LIPs for Windows and Office over the past decade. This represents a significant amount of work, notably on terminology (another key topic I hope to return to).

MS Windows 7, which was released in 2009, had 10 African language LIPs. Windows 8, released in 2012, introduced 3 more African LIPs (Kinyarwanda, Tigrinya, and Wolof), a Botswanan version for Setswana, and allowed installation of Hausa LIP on French in addition to English base language. The following list, derived from lists on the Windows site, summarizes African language LIP support under Windows 7 and 8 (in parentheses are the base languages on which the LIP can be installed, as well as indications for those languages added with 8 but not available for 7):

• Afrikaans (English base language editions)
• Amharic (English base language editions)
• Hausa (English base language editions; in Windows 8, French base language also)
• Igbo (English base language editions)
• Kinyarwanda (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (English base language editions)
• Setswana 
• Botswana (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• South Africa (English base language editions)
• Swahili (English base language editions)
• Tigrinya (Ethiopia) (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• Wolof (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions & French base language)
• Xhosa (English base language editions)
• Yoruba (English base language editions)
• Zulu (English base language editions)

The number of MS Office LIPs for African languages has gone from three for Office 2003 to 13 for Office 2013 (that's out of a total of over 100 LIPs worldwide). The table below is adapted from information on their Office Language Interface Pack (LIP) downloads page (check marks indicate LIP available):

Language	Native name	MS Office 2003	MS Office 2007	MS Office 2010	MS Office 2013
Afrikaans	Afrikaanse	✔	✔	✔	✔
Amharic	አማርኛ	-	✔	✔	✔
Hausa	Hausa	-	✔	✔	✔
Igbo	Igbo	-	✔	✔	✔
Kinyarwanda	Kinyarwanda	-	-	-	✔
Sepedi / Northern Sotho	Sesotho sa Leboa	-	✔	✔	✔
Setswana (South Africa)	Setswana	-	✔	✔	✔
Swahili	KiSwahili	✔	✔	✔	✔
Tigrinya	ትግርኛ	-	-	-	✔
Wolof	Wolof	-	-	-	✔
Xhosa	isiXhosa	-	✔	✔	✔
Yoruba	ede Yorùbá	-	✔	✔	✔
Zulu	isiZulu	✔	✔	✔	✔

I have no information on any plans for other African languages.

MS additionally offers Multilingual User Interfaces which provide language interface options on a single device, though it is not clear whether any of these offer any African languages. (The term Language Packs, as distinguished from LIPs, has me [and apparently also Wikipedia?] a bit confused as it seems to be used in different ways.)

See also MS's Language Portal for additional information on their localization efforts. Also worth noting that evidently MS completed the LIPs much more quickly with recent releases than they had in the past.

I'd invite any comments - corrections or additional information. In getting back up to speed on this I again encountered MS's ever complex array of sites and pages about different programs, products, and versions, so it's probable I missed some relevant information...