Language Technology, a Bridge Spanning the Linguistic Divergence - Umamaheswara Rao Garapati
Channel: SADiLaR
Date: 22/01/2021

More about this talk: It is incontrovertible that scholarship in digital humanities (DH) on the continent of Africa is still at its cradle. However, there have been several efforts across some African states towards raising practitioners and experts in the field towards not only the development but evidential impacts in solving social problems. These, in partnership with western colleagues, have brought about various DH projects, training institutions, infrastructures, training programmes and initiatives such as the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), University of Lagos’ Centre for Digital Humanities (CEDHUL), and DH initiatives in Kenya and Cameroun. Observably, these DH enterprises are far too meagre towards the yet-to-be utilised abundant available resources for DH scholarship, research and training. As a result, raising a generation of DH scholars and experts becomes daunting. The questions that arise include how can the African continent grow its scholars in commensurate with the abundant DH projects? Are there sufficient training facilities, resources and DH programmes? What are the scholars doing differently to stem the tides? In this presentation, I examine these issues, from personal experiences, especially as they relate to practice, training, pet-projects, application of some DH tools, existing support or lack of it. Through these, it is hoped that other DH enthusiasts are inspired in forging ahead, utilising existing tools and resources, creating others, and breaking the obstacles towards transformation into experts in the DH field.
COST