About African languages on Wikipedia & on PanAfriL10n

Wikipedia logo

Am overdue for an update on Wikipedias in African languages, but in the meantime, here's a quick suggestion concerning articles in any Wikipedia editions about African languages. That is, incorporate contributions to Wikipedia as assignments in African languages and linguistics classes.

This is actually a variation on a theme previously discussed on this blog. It is prompted by an observation made by Michael Everson comparing treatment in the English Wikipedia of the Irish language and the Wolof language (as an example). The latter is not bad but has gaps, and nowhere near the detail one finds on the Irish language (which extends to other articles).

What would it take to set up an experiment in a university-level African language program - in Africa or elsewhere - where a prof would institute this idea? The experience could be shared and developed with other objects in mind, such as contributions to African language Wikipedias. In a few cases like Wolof, which has its own edition of Wikipedia, one could write more about the language in the language itself.

Information on African language orthographies

Michael's comment came in the context of what he sees as the difficulty getting "decent grammatical and orthographic information on most major African languages." This in a discussion on Facebook following a post by Charles Riley (of Yale University Library) about the "Garay script," which was invented in the 1960s as an alternative to the dominant Latin-based script and the traditional Arabic-based Wolofal or writing Wolof. (Africa is a continent of many alphabets - another topic to which I hope to return soon).

ANLoc's logo for the PanAfriL10n wiki, 2008

With regard to information on orthographies of African languages, collecting such information was one of the mandates of the PanAfrican Localisation project (2005-2008). At one point early-on, the possibility of setting up a database on character requirements for diverse African language orthographies was seriously , but the quality of available information was not deemed to be sufficient for that investment (see discussion and diagrams of evolution). Ultimately the PanAfriL10n wiki (hosted by Bisharat.net since 2015) had a pretty good coverage of what was available, language by language and by script, but unfortunately updates have been spotty.

So, another possibility might be for African language and linguistics students to also help update this resource intended as an aid for localization and other language and technology efforts.

PanAfrican Localisation Resource Wiki is back

This past September, I began the process of bringing back the Pan African Localisation Resource Wiki,* the second, or really third transition since its inception over ten years ago as part of the PanAfrican Localisation project.

The PanAfriL10n wiki - then as now - was intended to bring into one place information of use to localizers in Africa, and also to others working on projects in the intersection of African languages and ICT (information and communication technology).

Background

The wiki is currently hosted on the Bisharat site, on a provisional basis, to facilitate upgrading and updating. As such it actually is back to where it was started before being moved to the PAL project's then new site, www.PanAfriL10n.org. That domain was transferred to the African Network for Localisation* (ANLoc) in 2008, with the wiki getting a make-over in the transition. It was managed as part of the ANLoc project until its website went offline in November 2013.

The wiki now has another new look, mainly a functional one matching a "skin" that works well with the latest version of the PmWiki software. More importantly I'm trying to build in some more functionality into the interface, and doing some updating. The updating of course will require a wider effort  - which is part of the reason to publicize it here.

Reasons for reviving the PanAfriL10n wiki

The main motivations for making this effort are that on the one hand, the wiki already had a lot of information about African languages and localization, and on the other, there is demand for such information (I personally get questions).

Beyond just recreating and updating an online reference, there are four dyamics I see in developing such a resource:

1. Moving from a "localization resource" to "knowledge base" for localization and language technology in Africa. This concerns a specialized wiki that was begun with a focus on information useful to supporting localization in Africa, but which can also address more broadly the intersection of ICT and African languages in ways that anticipate changing technical and sociolinguistic environments.
2. Combining matrices of knowledge. The wiki has always included information in several categories - languages, countries, technology, writing systems, and organizations and initiatives. In that, it's not different in kind from a number of more prominent resources, but arguably it differs in degree (for instance inclusion of organizations and localization topics along with country/language/script information). However, bringing ICT for development (ICT4D) information into a localization resource, and including specialized software like GIS into its treatment of software localization are examples of associating different specializations in the same information space.
3. Preserving history. It is important to retain information and lessons from past efforts, like early versions of software localized in African languages, or organizations that did some good work but no longer exist. The history, as part of the ongoing story of localization in Africa, is something that shouldn't be lost, and which may be important for understanding current trends and potentialities.
4. Localization ecology as both an organizing principle and a scope of potential utility. In African Languages in a Digital Age, I introduced the concept of "localization ecology" as a  way of understanding the interaction of factors in the environment for localization. I see this as a framework for development of the wiki (for example, one factor in localization ecology - economics - is almost totally absent from current content). It also can point to potential audiences of this evolving knowledge base (for example, localized software and language technology for education in Africa).

The task of bringing together material related to localisation in a linguistically diverse continent where many languages have short (if any) written tradition and tend to be disfavored in national policies is vast. The original concept 10+ years ago was to develop a database, but that proved impractical given not only the size of the task, but also the quality of data (for instance, where an orthography was not well established), and the nature of the technical and sociolinguistic environments alluded to above. Also the linguistic terrain is complex, with for instance the number of languages and distinction among them depending on the criteria used and needs addressed.

The wiki approach that was retained allows for more flexible grouping and linking of data that appears in different forms. One challenge has been how to structure that data - relatively simple in the case of standard organization of say pages on languages or pages on countries, but more complicated when dealing with questions like choice of languages to prioritize, or how to divide and group different kinds of organizations with varying national, regional, and/or international scope.

The main challenges, however, which are being faced these days even by Wikipedia, are how to maintain a community of contributors and how to assure the means to sustain the effort over the long term.

---

* The project names used the British spelling "localisation," which has been retained. Otherwise in the text of this blog I use the American spelling "localization."

Facebook page & the PanAfriL10n wiki

Profile picture for Beyond Niamey's
new Facebook page.

Two quick items:

• There is now a Facebook page for Beyond Niamey: https://www.facebook.com/BeyondNiamey. Please have a visit and let us know what you think.
• Am still working on getting the PanAfriL10n wiki into more respectable shape so as to make it again available for reference and contributions.

New entries to this blog are still being posted to Twitter (@donosborn) via RSS.

The Casablanca Statement in Tifinagh

In the previous entry, I posted the English and French originals of the 2005 Casablanca Statement on localization in Africa, plus translations in Arabic, N'Ko, and Portuguese. Since then, I found the Amazight (Berber) translation, which was provided in Tifinagh script. It is included below as an image file (the text was in a pre-Unicode font).

I have also retrieved a backup version of the PanAfrican L10n wiki, and am working on getting it into presentable form on a provisional location before making it public. The wiki was started just before the Casablanca meeting a little over 10 years ago, and was developed under the PAL and ANLoc projects before going offline with the ANLoc site in late 2013.

---

The Casabanca Statement, 2005

A little more than ten years ago, the first PanAfrican Localisation (PAL) Workshop, held in Casablanca, Morocco on 13-15 June 2005, concluded with a short statement or declaration. I am reposting it here with the thought that a decade later, it is worth revisiting to measure how much has and has not been accomplished, and consider what might be next.

The Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) funded the PAL project in 2005-08, followed by the African Network for Localisation (ANLoc) in 2008-11. Although ANLoc continues as a loose network, there is currently no organization or donor support comparable to what there was before.

The Casablanca Statement is included below in English and French - the two working languages of the workshop in June 2005 - as well as in Portuguese, Arabic, and N'Ko translations. There was talk of translations into other Africa languages, but as far as I know, no others have yet been done.

---

Casablanca Statement

African localisation experts met in Casablanca in a workshop organised by Kabissa with Bisharat under IDRC funding, and in collaboration with MTDS and the Casablanca Technopark centre. The event benefitted from contributions from the Moroccan Minister-Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of General and Economic Affairs, the Canadian Ambassador to Morocco, and experts from other continents.

After three days of work, the participants in the meeting reached the following conclusions:

1. Limiting people to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in a foreign language tends to exacerbate the digital divide; makes ICT adoption long, difficult, and expensive; and impoverishes local culture.
2. Localisation makes ICT more accessible to everybody, including users from rural areas and young students, reinforcing the importance of our culture and helping us preserve our identity.
3. Localisation of ICT into indigenous African languages is therefore key to rapid and fair development in Africa.
4. For localisation to succeed and have its maximum impact in society, collaboration among governments, civil society, educators, linguists, computer professionals, standards organisations and development agencies is necessary.

We, the participants, commit ourselves to promoting this vision and working towards social development in Africa through ICT localisation.

Casablanca, 15 June 2005

---

Déclaration de Casablanca

Des experts Africains en localisation se sont réunis à Casablanca lors d'un atelier organisé par Kabissa avec Bisharat, financé par le CRDI et avec la collaboration de MTDS et du centre Technopark de Casablanca. La rencontre a profité de la collaboration du Ministre délégué auprès du Premier Ministre chargé des Affaires économiques et générales du Maroc, de l'ambassadeur du Canada au Maroc, et d'experts d'autres continents.

Après trois jours de travaux, les participants ont conclu comme suit :

1. Restreindre les utilisateurs des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) à une langue étrangère tend à exacerber la fracture numérique, rend l'adoption des TIC longue, difficile et onéreuse, et enfin appauvrit les cultures locales.
2. La localisation rend les TIC accessibles à tous, y compris aux utilisateurs ruraux et aux écoliers ; elles renforcent l'importance de notre culture et nous aident à garder notre identité.
3. La localisation des TIC en langues indigènes d'Afrique est par conséquent une des clés du développement rapide et équitable en Afrique.
4. Le succès et l'impact maximal de la localisation dans la société exige la collaboration des gouvernements, de la société civile, des professionnels de l'éducation et de l'informatique, des linguistes, des organismes de normalisation et des agences de développement.

Nous, les participants, nous engageons à promouvoir cette vision et à travailler au développement social de l'Afrique par le biais de la localisation des TIC.

Fait à Casablanca le 15 juin 2005

---

Declaração de Casablanca

Peritos em localização de varias partes de África reuniram-se em Casablanca para participarem de um seminário organizado por Kabissa e Bisharat, financiado pelo IDRC/CRDI em colaboração com MTDS e o Centro Technopark de Casablanca. O evento teve o benefício de contribuições pelo Secretario do Primeiro-ministro Marroquino para Assuntos Económicos e Gerais, o Embaixador Canadense em Marrocos e peritos de outros continentes.

Após três dias do trabalho, os participantes na reunião chegaram às seguintes conclusões:

1. Limitar as pessoas ao uso da tecnologia de informação e de comunicação (TIC) numa língua estrangeira, por regra aumenta o fosso digital; torna a adopção de TICs um processo longo, difícil, e caro; e empobrece a cultura local.
2. Localização torna TIC mais acessível a todos, incluindo usuários das áreas rurais e estudantes jovens, reforçando a importancia da cultura própria e ajudando a preservar a identidade.
3. A localização de TIC em línguas africanas indígenas é consequentemente chave ao desenvolvimento rápido e justo em África.
4. Para que localização seja um sucesso e tenha o maior impacto na sociedade, é necessária a colaboração entre governos, a sociedade civil, os educadores, os linguistas, os profissionais de informática, as organizações de padrões e as agências de desenvolvimento.

Nós, os participantes, cometemo-nos a promover esta visão e a desempenhar esforços para o desenvolvimento social em África através de localização de TIC.

Casablanca, aos 15 de Junho, 2005

---

بيان الدار البيضاء

التقى خبراء التطويع والتعريب الأفريقيون بالدار البيضاء في ورشة عمل تحت رعاية كابيسا (Kabissa) وبشارات بتمويل من مركز بحوث التنمية الدولي (IDRC)، وبالتنسيق مع MTDS والمنتزه التقني "تكنوبارك الدار البيضاء". وحقق هذا الحدث استفادة رائعة من المشاركات والإسهامات التي قدمها الوزير المغربي المفوض من قِبل رئيس الوزراء والمعني بالشؤون الاقتصادية والنواحي العامة، والسفير الكندي بالمغرب، بالإضافة إلى خبراء من قارات أخرى.

وبعد ثلاثة أيام من العمل، توصل المشاركون في الاجتماع إلى النتائج التالية:

• يؤدي قصر استخدام الفرد لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات (ICT) على لغة أجنبية دون اللغة المحلية إلى تفاقم الفجوة الرقمية واتساعها، وزيادة الفترة الزمنية المستغرقة لنشر استخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات وصعوبة تحقيق ذلك مع ارتفاع في التكلفة، إضافًة إلى إضعاف الثقافة المحلية.
• يعمل التطويع والتعريب على إتاحة إمكانية استخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات للجميع، بما في ذلك المستخدمون من المناطق الريفية والطلبة صغار السن؛ مما يؤكد على أهمية حضارتنا ويدعمها ويتيح لنا الاحتفاظ بهويتنا الثقافية.
• يعد تطويع تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات وتعريبها إلى اللغات الأفريقية القومية، بالنظر لما سبق، عاملاً أساسيًا للتطوير والتنمية بخطى سريعة وبصورة عادلة في القارة الأفريقية.
• يجب على كل من الحكومات والمجتمع المدني والعاملين بمجال التعليم واللغة، وكذلك محترفي الكمبيوتر وهيئات التطوير والتنمية والمؤسسات الرسمية التعاون والتضامن لإنجاح صناعة التطويع والتعريب وإتيان ثمارها على النحو المرجو منها.

ونلتزم نحن المشاركون بتعزيز هذه الرؤية ودعمها والعمل نحو تحقيق مزيد من التنمية الاجتماعية في أفريقيا من خلال تطويع وتعريب تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات.

الدار البيضاء، 15 يونيو 2005

---

---

English & French versions came out of the Workshop. Portuguese translated by Mr. Rui Correia. Arabic translated by Dr. Adel El Zaim. N'Ko translated by Prof. Baba Mamady Diané (text was pre-Unicode).

Quick notes: ANLoc offline & Yahoogroups RSS problem

The African Network for Localisation (ANLoc) website is still down. Although I am not personally involved in its management, hopefully there will be some update to share soon. Hence the site RSS (and that for the subsidiary PanAfriL10n wiki), as seen in the right-hand column/sidebar, are not working.

Also still haven't sorted out how to revive the RSS feeds for Yahoogroups also featured in the sidebar. Hope to resolve or reformat soon. (Per discussions online, this apparently relates to a group setting changed when Yahoo updated the groups features.)

The presentation of sites and groups on Beyond Niamey was discussed more fully in a recent post.

I've also started building some short pages on this blog site, which are linked via tabs below the header.

More notes about all the lists in the sidebar

This blog was originally set up with a side purpose of providing links to various fora (forums) on which African languages and technology were discussed - and these still appear in the sidebar. For some years, some of these fora - email lists and discussion boards - were quite active and had practical impact beyond the important role of facilitating information sharing among diverse people involved in internationalization and localization for (or at least directly relevant to) African languages. They were significant enough, I thought, to be listed under "Facilitating communication about localization" in African Languages in a Digital Age.

The ALDA book was not, however, the place to get into the history of these efforts. A little over 6 years ago, I gave some background about the lists that had been set up under Bisharat and the PanAfrican Localisation (PAL) project (predecessor to ANLoc) in a posting entitled "Some notes about all the lists in the sidebar."

Nor was ALDA the place to discuss specific plans with regard to those lists or more recent forms of social media. I'll take a quick stab at that now, along with other info per "More notes ...."

The "A12n" (Africanization of ICT) lists basically went offline beginning with closing A12-forum and A12n-entraide at the end of 2007, and then A12n-collaboration closing in mid-2009 when Kabissa could no longer host it. The smaller A12n-policy persisted a short while longer. All the traffic on these lists from the end of November 2004 is archived on A12n Archives. However, that leaves out early traffic on three lists, notably the very active first two-and-a-half years of A12n-collab. I am working on recuperating that to post as a file on A12n-archives.

The PAL lists are similarly preserved on PAL-archives.

The QuickTopic boards still exist for reference, but due to issues with spam, most have been closed to new posts. The exceptions are the three boards for the Nigerian "decamillionare" languages - Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba - which are still open. Last August, in the wake of Google Translate's most recent African language machine translation project, which includes these three languages along with Somali and Zulu, I posted on the three related QT boards to see what might ensue. Present thinking is that it's not clear there is a benefit in trying to sustain these as active fora.

There is a similar set of issues for other lists that I have started or co-founded... Like Multilingual_Literacy, which addresses a topic that still seems to me to be under-appreciated (approaches to literacy in school and out, in societies where people speak more than one language). AfrophoneWikis addresses a set of issues that is still very current, but the list is not so active.

So, I will be doing more cleaning of the sidebar soon.

One is left with the conclusion that email lists and discussion boards may have utility depending on the topic and user community, but that they require time and some strong effort to maintain as active communities. Their heyday seems to have passed, just judging (subjectively) by the generally lower traffic on many lists. But at the same time it's not clear that other social media - the Facebook group on African Languages for example - whatever their other advantages, can fill the same role for something like collaboration on localization.

An additional note. A few months ago, I added Google adsense to see what that might yield. It's an experiment, but one that hopefully does not detract too much from the overall presentation. So far it seems to be a waste of space.

PanAfrican L10n project workshop, Tshwane, South Africa

Currently in Tshwane, South Africa (more precisely in the Pretoria suburb of Centurion within the municipality of Tshwane) following the 2nd PanAfrican Localisation project workshop (5-7 Nov. 2007). The aims if the workshop included generating recommendations for the sustainability of the project output, discussing new projects, and facilitating networking among localizers and others involved with African languages and ICT.

Will post more on this soon. In the meantime, some of the participants in the workshop have posted blog entries or webpages on the workshop:

• Jikomboe (Ndesanjo Macha)
• dB (Dwayne Bailey)
• Educ (site of Éveil du Congo)

Am planning to visit the Wikipedia Academy that will be held in Johannesburg on Saturday 10 Nov. before my flight out later in the day.

Some notes about all the lists in the sidebar

In another context someone suggested there might be too many lists about localization in Africa - a fair comment if you take a look at the amount of stuff I put in the left sidebar (which still isn't comprehensive - there are some other lists that should be added, and hopefully will be soon).

To clarify what's going on I thought it would be worth a little bit of background. I haven't put all this together in a narrative form yet, though I did do a summary table here (scroll down or earch "Table 7") not long ago.

Back about 5 years ago there really was no list dedicated to African languages and ICT. At the same time there was a dearth of information about what i18n made possible for African languages, and various other issues that hadn't been discussed.

Around late August 2001 I received a question from someone in Fantsuam Foundation about a keyboard for Hausa. I didn't have an authoritative answer so on Sept. 2 I set up a message board on QuickTopic.com called "Hausa charsets & keyboards" as a way of perhaps getting other input to this and related questions.

I later set up similar boards on QuickTopic.com as part of my response to new questions about other languages. In some cases it seemed appropriate to set up the board for all languages in a country, rather than each language. Creation of these message boards - (10 in all - at this point) was in this sense demand driven. Their success has varied, but at the least they continue to serve as places where relevant information can be posted and found by anyone.

In January 2002 I took another tack. Having participated in the Unicode list, being aware of the dearth of information on Unicode in many countries where French is the official language, and having seen the relative success of some French-language Yahoogroups on other ICT in Africa topics, I set up a list called "Unicode-Afrique." This has proved to be one of the most successful, although it is rather quiet lately. (There is some trouble with the RSS feed for this list - still working on it.)

It became clear that it would help to have a specialized list for some technical questions relating to extended Latin characters (commonly referred to as special characters or modified letters). So in March 2002, "A12n-collaboration" was set up. "A12n" was a coined acronym for "Africanization" in the sense of the "last mile of i18n" and L10n in Africa (I briefly discussed this on this blog in a posting on February 06, 2005).

The A12n-collab list was originally intended as a temporary online working group to advance and link efforts to define the needs of African languages in terms of extended characters and diacritics (fonts, keyboards). This list was quite active for a while and facilitated some new work. It in 2004 it was also added to LinguistList's roster of mailing lists.

The traffic on Unicode-Afrique, A12n-collab, and the QT boards pointed to some other needs. First was a portal where people could easily find information, sites, and projects discussed on the various forums. Thus the "A12n gateway" page was created. Currently this page needs updating, but will be reformulated to provide some current information complementary to the PanAfriL10n wiki and retain older material for background.

Another apparent need was for lists that were less narrowly technical and more addressed to applications and localization efforts. So, in June 2003, two new lists were created: "A12n-forum" in English, and "A12n-entraide" in French. Neither list has really fulfilled the hopes for them, though some interesting information has been posted on A12n-forum and to a lesser degree A12n-entraide.

With the beginning of the PanAfrican Localisation project in April 2005 and the preparations for its first workshop in June, a list for communicating about logistics was set up called "PanAfrLoc." Following the workshop, members continued to use it for communication about various topics (the archives only reflect this). One of the problems with this list was that its members included people more comfortable in English or French as working languages, but that it was not possible to translate all traffic.

PanAfrLoc was closed in favor of a new set of lists for different working languages: PAL-en in English, PAL-fr in French, and PAL-pt in Portuguese. Messages to any one of the lists are translated and sent to the other two via a service called Tradauto. All the traffic is additionally reposted to PAL-Archives (the RSS from which is in the sidebar.

There are some additional lists of note from other sources:

[more to come]

So, what about the last year?

Busy. Some work highlights:

• Vastly expanded the Pan African Localisation wiki (and that's still in progress). The idea with this is to develop a comprehensive information resource for people of a range of backgrounds approaching localization in African languages. First of all, localizers - people working on or planning a project for some aspect of localization in one or more African langauges. Also policymakers (ICT, language, and increasingly localization), development program planners, local activists, etc. It involves bringing a lot of information together (in many cases just basic with outlinks) and interlinking it. Localization to a certain degree involves bringing together of "previously unrelated skills, or matrices, of thought" (per the well known formulation of Arthur Koestler in another context some years ago) so this wiki is combining information on African languages and sociolinguistics, along with language technology tools, ICT4D information, mention of policies etc. In fact, all these "skils or matrices of thought" can also be understood as interacting parts of a larger "localization ecology," which is a concept I'm working on.


• Presented at and participated in "Regional Consultation on Local Language Computing Policy in Developing Asia" and "PAN Localization Project Phase II Meeting"meetings of the PAN Localisation Project, held in Thimphu, Bhutan in January. The PAN L10n project is funded by IDRC and has been particularly successful in facilitating localization work in several countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The discussion of "local language computing policy" involved representatives from several other countries in the region.


• Attended a one-day seminar on "Recent Experiences on Measuring Languages in Cyberspace" at UNESCO in Paris. This was on 22 February, the second day of a two day observance of "International Mother Language Day."


• Helped organize and participated in the "Pan African Research on L10N Workshop & Localization Blitz" held in Marrakech, Morocco in February 2007. This is another piece in IDRC's strategy to develop a network for localization in Africa. The workshop was organized by the Tactical Technology Collective - same organization that put together Africa Source I (Okahandja, Namibia, 2004) & II (Kalangala, Uganda, 2006) and the Localisation Dev workshop (Warsaw, Poland, 2004). Many of the participants also had been at the PanAfrican Localisation Workshop in Casablanca, Morocco (2005); three others and I came from the seminar in Paris mentioned above.


• Attended the 38th ACAL 2007 & 11th ALTA 2007 Conference held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, US, in March 2007. This was an opportunity to connect with various people involved in research on and teaching of African languages. It has been my thought for a while that linguists and language instructors can be involved more with localization efforts.


• Submitted extensive comments on the Africa section of the "International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development" in May. More about this in a later post.


• Taught a distance course on "Language and Development Communication for the Payson School of Tulane University. This was an interesting challenge and opportunity to learn as well as teach. I hope I have the opportunity to give this course again.


• Continued to interact online with various people working on aspects of localization and internationalization. This is not really news though - have been doing this in one form or another for several years.

A quick catching up - currently in Morocco. It has been difficult to add to this blog. One short post I added a month ago did not load.

PanAfrican Localisation

Long preparations for the PanAfrican Localisation Workshop are over and we're in the midst of the workshop in Casablanca. It runs 13-15 June. Hope to have more to write on it later. For the moment, the page for the project of which it is a part is:
www.bisharat.net/PanAfrLoc/

Unicode Conference (IUC27)

This was held in Berlin, 6-8 April. My participation was in co-organizing a panel on African languages and Unicode (held in French).

Other

Work continues on other aspects of Bisharat. Also had a chance to visit and give a presentation at Peking University (Center for African Studies) on April 12.