30 September 2014

MS-Office Translate

Languages, Part 4a


MS-Office Translate

In MS-Office, in Word, under “Review”, the above icon can be found with the word “Translate” under it.

Clicking it leads you into a process of translation of your document. This is done via the Internet, through the browser Internet Explorer, which must be available on your computer.

The controls appear in a panel on the right of your screen. You choose from drop-down menus which language you want to translate from and to. When you click “Translate the whole document”, the browser opens and you will soon have a translation.

The number of languages it offers is less than Google, and it does not include any indigenous African languages at all.

It is an effective instrument for translating from French to English, and vice-versa. As such, it is a help to Africans.

But this Internet translator is another example of the regrettable dominance of the same dominant languages, even with this tool that is capable of redressing the balance.

It may be that government action would be required, say in the form of subsidy to service providers or academics, so that automatic translation services in and between all of our South African official languages is made available.

But the history of PanSALB does not encourage an expectation that this could happen easily, or soon.

·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

29 September 2014

Google Translate

Languages, Part 4



Google Translate

In 2013, “Google Translate” would translate text from and to the following languages:


These languages are 71 in number, and they include only one indigenous African language: Swahili.

In 2014, the number of languages on the “Google Translate” list has increased to 81, but still there is only the one indigenous African language on the list: Swahili.

The advent of free, online, automatic translation services is a great boon and a help to people a lot of the time. In our continent, where hundreds of languages are spoken, it opens the prospect of people being able to communicate much better than before across language barriers, if they have written text.

Printed text can be scanned and rendered into digital text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Once in that form it can be translate by Google Translate or by similar software.

But none of this works for Africans, within Africa, if only one African language is available.

Whereas automatic translation is in general progressive, the absence of indigenous African languages works regressively for these languages. It means, at this stage, that the selected, languages are even more privileged than before, and the African languages relatively even more disadvantaged than before. The “playing field” of automatic translation is less level than before.

Machine translation

Computer translation is a great assistance, but it is not perfect. Computer translation has to be corrected, because it always contains errors, and serious errors at that.

Computer translation assists because it quickly gives you a draft to work on.

To correct, you must apply your own knowledge of the languages, or use an old-fashioned dictionary, or the computer equivalent of an old-fashioned dictionary.

Translation is an art. Computer translation cannot complete the artistic function of the translator.

South Africans have not come to terms with translation, yet. This is not only true in terms of the eleven official languages, and other languages spoken in South Africa, but also in terms of international languages used in other parts of Africa such as French, Portuguese, Arabic, and Swahili.

This becomes at some point a political problem, because politics relies on communication, so that anything that inhibits communication can have a political effect.

·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

16 September 2014

Wiktionary

Languages, Part 3



Wiktionary

Dictionaries

Every living, written language needs to have a dictionary, and it needs to have a living literature in production, and readers of that literature.

The vital question of the literature, and the readership of the literature in a given language, is one that we will return to, towards the end of this course.

The dictionary serves the literature. The dictionary we are referring to is the kind that PanSALB calls a “monolingual explanatory dictionary”, so as to distinguish it from bilingual dictionaries, which serve the purpose of translation from one language to another. Such dictionaries are invariably in two halves, e.g. Khosa-English/English-Xhosa.

We will return to the important question of translation in the next part. Let it suffice for now to note that the existence of translation dictionaries is a double-edged sword. On the one side it brings a language into cognisance by different language speakers, and so makes it accessible to more readers and speakers. But on the other side, bilingual dictionaries open the less advantaged language up to domination by the more powerful language. The consequence can be that the intellectuals of an African language-group, for example, can be drawn off into the pool of the other and in particular colonial language, such as English, for example.

Further, the commonality of English (or Afrikaans) as the other language in the bilingual dictionaries of the nine indigenous official languages keeps the colonisers’ languages in the position of mediating between the indigenous languages. The publication of, say, a Zulu-Venda/Venda-Zulu dictionary seems a long way away, but until such dictionaries are available, the literary relationship between those two languages will continue to be passed through the cultural filter of English, at least to some extent, to the disadvantage of the two African languages.

The safety of a language cannot be secured by the mere existence of bilingual dictionaries. There has to be a dictionary of the language, in the language itself - the kind that PanSALB calls a “monolingual explanatory dictionary”. And it has to be kept up to date with the development of the language, so that it is a transmitter of that development to all the language-speakers, writers and readers.

In a later part of this course we will look at the example of Kiswahili, at its outstanding success as an international language, and at the history of Kiswahili-Kiswahili dictionaries, which several generations ago superseded the bilingual translation dictionaries that the Christian missionaries had originally created.

PanSALB outsourced its central task

The case for the creation of a monolingual explanatory dictionary for each of the nine indigenous official languages is incontrovertible. If these languages are to survive, it must be done, and done quickly. Therefore it is PanSALB’s job. PanSALB has outsourced this job to nine “National Lexicography Units” (NLUs) located in academic institutions. These are “Section 29” not-for-profit companies, dispersed around the country, and there is no trace of their names and contact details on the PanSALB web site.

More to the point, there are no (monolingual) dictionaries. None. There are rumours of a Zulu one, and rumours of a Venda one, but so far, no reference, name, publisher, vendor, price, or anything. All information to the contrary will be gratefully received by the Communist University.

Why Wiktionary?

Dictionaries are registers of words in use. The only source of words in use is the users, who are the speakers, writers and readers of the language.

It follows that the creation of a dictionary has to be a mass project, which cannot in practice be effected by obscure and little-known initiatives such as PanSALB’s “NLUs”.

Wiktionary is an existing Internet structure that is available, free, to anyone wanting to enter a mass, collaborative project to compile a dictionary in any language.

Wiktionary is a well-organised form of “crowdsourcing”. The Wikipedia entry on crowdsourcing in fact describes dictionary-compilation as a classical form of crowdsourcing. For example, it says:

“The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) may provide one of the earliest examples of crowdsourcing. An open call was made to the community for contributions by volunteers to identify all words in the English language and provide example quotations of their usages for each one. They received over 6 million submissions over a period of 70 years.”

Wiktionaries of South African languages already exist. They are listed in this table:


So why is PanSALB not promoting these Wiktionary projects?

Wiktionary is part of the family of collaborative projects that includes Wikipedia, which is one of the most-visited sites in the whole world. All of these projects are created by, and maintained by volunteers.

With a Wiktionary project, the dictionary is being published as it is being created. Users can have the benefit of the work, long before it is ready for publication in hard-copy form (if that form is even considered necessary). I may actually prove very difficult to publish hard-copy dictionaries, even if there is a will. The languages should not be held hostage for the sake of this semi-obsolete form of publication, as desirable as it may be to have such hard-copy works.

The Communist University would like to hear from anyone who has been assisting in the compilation of South African, or other African-language Wiktionaries.

·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

10 September 2014

Kha Ri Gude

Languages, Part 2a


Kha Ri Gude


What is the Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign?

The Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign was launched in February 2008, with the intention of enabling 4,7 million adults above the age of 15 years to become literate and numerate in one of the eleven official languages. Achieving this goal will enable South Africa to reach its UN: Education For All commitment made at Dakar in 2000 - that of halving the country’s illiteracy rates by 2015. Initiated and managed by the Department of Education, Kha Ri Gude delivers across all nine provinces in a massive logistical outreach. The Campaign enables adult learners to read, write and calculate in their mother tongue in line with the Unit Standards for ABET level 1, and also to learn spoken English. The specifically designed Campaign materials teach reading, writing and numeracy and integrates themes and lifeskills such as health, gender, the environment and civic education. These materials have been adapted for use in Braille in eleven languages, and for use by the deaf.

What is the role of the volunteers?

The volunteers are central to the Campaign and contribute not only to the teaching and learning process but also to ensuring advocacy, recruitment, monitoring, and ensuring that the Campaign is a vibrant part of communities. Methods of communication differ from the usual methods and include: Word of mouth through meetings with women’s groups, the youth, taxi organisations, trades unions, traditional leadership, traditional healers, door-to-door visits. Announcements in church, at funerals, at Imbizos, taxi ranks, society meetings. Interviews and announcements on local and community radio, community newspapers. The display of posters, distribution of pamphlets, adverts on notice boards and even loud hailing.

During the 2008/09 and 2009/20 financial years, the Campaign enabled close on one million learners to become literate and has created approximately 75 000 short term facilitation jobs. By drawing on the participation of a range of stakeholders, the Campaign is evidence that “together we can make a difference”.

The following chart illustrates the growth of the Campaign by province over the 2008/09 and 2009/10 financial years.



CU Comment

This course is concerned with languages, and not primarily with literacy.

It is not possible to see for sure that this programme is going to strengthen the use of other languages when it is at the same time promoting the use of English.

Literacy is important for languages. Especially it is important that literature of all kinds is produced in any language that expects to survive, and that the literature is read.

We report this programme in its own terms. We await further reports, appraisals and criticism.

·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

09 September 2014

PanSALB

Languages, Part 2


PanSALB

PanSALB was established under the SA Constitution, which says the following:

Pan South African Language Board established by national legislation must
(a) promote, and create conditions for, the development and use of -
  (i) all official languages;
  (ii) the Khoi, Nama and San languages; and
  (iii) sign language; and
(b) promote and ensure respect for -
  (i) all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including GermanGreek,GujaratiHindiPortugueseTamilTelegu and Urdu; and
  (ii) ArabicHebrewSanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa.



The 2013-2014 Annual Performance Plan downloadable from the PanSALB web site says:

2.4 Programme 4: Languages Services, Programme Description

This programme is made up of NLBs [National Language Bodies], NLUs [National Lexicography Units], Language Use services (language in education, translation, interpreting, and literature included), Research, and Provincial Coordination services.

NLBs are responsible for the implementation of the languages framework for each of the
official languages including the Khoi and San languages and sign languages. This would involve authentication and screening of processes. NLUs are responsible for the production of lexicographic language products and service. For example the production of dictionaries – monolingual to multilingual dictionaries.

Language use is responsible for the application of language in the different spheres of life e.g. language in education, literature, and specialist areas – banking etc. Research is responsible for exploration of information on languages. Provincial coordination is responsible for providing secretariat support to Provincial Language Committees (PLCs) and coordinating language services in the province.




The 2011-2012 Annual Report downloadable from the PanSALB web site has a statement by Mr. Mxolisi Zwane, the Caretaker CEO of PanSALB, which includes the following:

PanSALB has been in the spotlight for the past two or three years for the wrong reasons. As a result concerns were raised by the Portfolio Committee of Arts & Culture in Parliament, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other concerned stakeholders. Areas of concern were around the governance of this institution as well as its failure to fulfil its core mandate... In response to this complaint the Minister of Arts and Culture, the honourable Mr Paul Mashatile, commissioned an investigation which was conducted by The Resolve Group, a report of which was delivered to him on 30 March 2012.  The findings of this commission confirmed the concerns that were raised earlier: 

        It was clear that PanSALB as an organisation, was not fulfilling its legislative mandate and that while it continues to exist as an organisation and pays the salaries of its employees and infrastructure costs, it is not fulfilling the functions for which it was formed, structured and staffed.

        There were challenges regarding governance issues in that the entity was not fully compliant with the Public Finance Management Act, Treasury Regulations and other legislative requirements.

        The board of PanSALB had failed to meet its obligations, both in terms of oversight, fulfilling its fiduciary duties and ensuring the fulfilment of its functions in terms of the act.

That being the case the minister dissolved the PanSALB Board and appointed myself as Caretaker Chief Executive Offi­cer, the Accounting Offi­cer and with the Accounting Authority mandate. The responsibility of my position was also to bring about a turnaround strategy that will enable the organisation to fulfil its mandate while addressing all governance issues. 

I resumed my duties on 15 June 2012, and met with all staff members at head o­ffice to begin the process of intervention and mapping out the way forward. On 20 June 2012 I appointed a team of professionals to assist in the organisation review and stabilization process. Together with the team our focus was to stabilize the organisation, to stop mismanagement and maladministration, to revive staff morale and to refocus the organisation in fulfilling its core mandate. 




There is a PanSALB History page on the PanSALB web site, which contains very little actual history, but which describes in detail, what PanSALB is supposed to do and how it is structured.

The PanSALB History page includes the following:

Lexicography and Terminology Development

Another of PanSALB's focus areas is that of lexicography and terminology development. Nine National Lexicography Units were registered in 2001, their task being to compile monolingual explanatory dictionaries and other products to help with language development. The Afrikaans, English, isiZulu, and isiXhosa units have published a number of volumes of their monolingual dictionaries. The Tshivenda Lexicography Unit, based at the University of Venda, launched the world's first Tshivenda dictionary in July 2004, and said it expected to publish the final draft in 2006 or 2007. The lexicography units are based at tertiary institutions throughout South Africa. Each unit is managed by a board of directors and registered as a Section 21 (not-for-profit) company, which allows the unit autonomy to raise funds to carry on its work.




CU Comment

When the CU committed, in August 2012, to deliver a Languages course, problematising the question of languages in South Africa, we knew that there was a problem with PanSALB, because after eighteen years since its establishment in 1995, there was nothing visible to show for its work.

The particular products we were looking for, which we take to be the sign of a developing language, or of a language which has a chance, at least, to survive, is what are described in the passage above as monolingual explanatory dictionaries. A language which does not have such a dictionary is at best marking time. At worst it is on a slide towards oblivion. We will return to this question with practical suggestions and historical examples, later in the course.

From the PanSALB web site a year later, in August 2013, it is apparent that the picture is still very little changed.

There is a candid statement by Mr Mxolisi Zwane, the then Caretaker CEO, which describes the realisation by the government that PanSALB was not fulfilling its mandate, and his consequent appointment. Part of this statement is reproduced above.

The subsequent 2013-2014 Annual Performance Plan is detailed, and 86 pages long. We are going to concentrate on the tell-tale question of dictionaries. We find that they are supposed to be produced under PanSALB by semi-autonomous units, constituted as Section 29 not-for-profit companies, located in tertiary [educational] institutions. But there are still no “monolingual explanatory dictionaries” published for any of the indigenous African languages.

To conclude this introduction on PanSALB, here is a table showing what was given from the drop-down menu on the Home page for “Languages”, on 30 August 2013. This is where PanSALB is purporting to explain itself to the official language groups. Four of them, plus Sign, had nothing in them except the words “Under Construction”. In August 2014, the picture is substantially the same, or possibly worse. “Under construction” is the most common thing you will find on this web site.

It means that PanSALB is not concerned to check that its own web site is conforming with the rules on language that PanSALB, among other things, is supposed to police in terms of the Act and the Constitution. This is really a scandal.


NLU
Link
Zulu
Xhosa
“Under Construction”
Afrikaans
English
“Under Construction”
Northern Sotho
Tswana
Sotho
Tsonga
Swati
“Under Construction”
Venda
“Under Construction”
Ndebele
Sign language
“Under Construction”




·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

03 September 2014

South African Languages

Languages, Part 1

The National Flag, as it was known in the exile years: now lost.

South African Languages

The attached text is reproduced from the very full and clear Wikipedia article on “Languages of South Africa.”

This Wikipedia text gives us a very good empirical spread of data relevant to the general status of languages in South Africa, to start our course with, plus a large number of useful hyperlinks to satisfy the curious.

Constitution

In addition to the factual basis, the Wikipedia page quotes the parts of the South African Constitution that are relevant to the question of languages, reproduced below.

It is in the Constitution that the “official” languages are named as such.

The Constitution declares an explicit intention to restore the indigenous languages of our people and to repair the damage done to them under apartheid.

We will accept this, without question, as a good and necessary aim of the Constitution, but we will continue to ask the question during the course: Has the SA Constitution been obeyed in this regard?

The National Flag

Not everyone knows that the black green and gold flag, now frequently referred to as “the ANC flag”, was in the exile days known as the National Flag. This example can remind us that the struggle was to come back to ourselves, to recover what is ours, and to be ourselves; yet we did not always succeed. The struggle for languages is, likewise, a struggle for South African characteristics.

In the case of the National Flag, it was set aside during the negotiations that led to the democratic breakthrough of 1994. It was replaced by something put together by a graphic designer, working for the old regime since 1977, by the name of Frederick Gordon Brownell: a respectable man.

Languages, too, can be lost in a respectable way, if life is presumed to be improved, or modernised, by the loss of what is ours, and its substitution with something else.


From the South African Constitution:

1.      The official languages of the Republic are SepediSesothoSetswanasiSwatiTshivenda,XitsongaAfrikaansEnglishisiNdebeleisiXhosa and isiZulu.
2.      Recognising the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people, the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages.
3.      (a) The national government and provincial governments may use any particular official languages for the purposes of government, taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and the balance of the needs and preferences of the population as a whole or in the province concerned; but the national government and each provincial government must use at least two official languages.
(b) Municipalities must take into account the language usage and preferences of their residents.
4.      The national government and provincial governments, by legislative and other measures, must regulate and monitor their use of official languages. Without detracting from the provisions of subsection (2), all official languages must enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably.
5.      Pan South African Language Board established by national legislation must
(a) promote, and create conditions for, the development and use of -
  (i) all official languages;
  (ii) the Khoi, Nama and San languages; and
  (iii) sign language; and
(b) promote and ensure respect for -
  (i) all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including GermanGreek,GujaratiHindiPortugueseTamilTelegu and Urdu; and
  (ii) ArabicHebrewSanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa.

— Constitution of the Republic of South Africa[10]


·        The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Languages of South Africa, Wikipedia, 2013

02 September 2014

Languages, Introduction

Languages, Part 0


Languages, Introduction

Each language is a work of art, as priceless as any work of art that can be imagined.

All languages are part of the general human heritage.

Languages are kept alive by the speakers and the writers of the language. Each language is a collaborative project of People’s Power. There is no centre and no hierarchy. Language authority rests with the ordinary speakers.

Each language is produced (and constantly reproduced) in a form of organisation that is nowadays called a “distributed network” (See Ron Press, New tools for Marxists, 1994). It can be imagined as a diagram:


Creation of language is a real-life, on-going example of the kind of mode of production that can supersede the capitalist mode of production. The work is its own reward. The artifact produced is beyond price, and it belongs to all. It at once becomes a common patrimony.

Creation of language happens in real life. The creation of the language and the use of the language are one and the same. Language is an example of the kind of communistic mode of production that can supersede the capitalist mode of production. The work is its own reward. The artefact that is produced – language – belongs to all.

The many languages of the world are open gateways. They are not barriers.

Learning languages teaches the learner how to understand people, in more ways than just understanding what they are saying when they talk to you. Far from being a “confusion of tongues”, as in the Babel-myth (see illustration), the many languages are all open ways to understanding.

Languages that are spoken by large numbers of Africans, in different countries on our continent are: Kiswahili, French, English, Arabic and Portuguese. Of these, only Kiswahili is a purely African language. Across the continent, translation of an African language into another African language is often done via a European language, and this is a problem.

Because there is no central authority, a dictionary is only a collection and a record of words as they are used. But dictionaries – single-language dictionaries – make a language stronger.

In South Africa there are eleven official languages. Most of them are not well served with dictionaries, or with the publication of written literature.

The upward mobility of people that has followed upon our South African democratic breakthrough has resulted in a flight to English in particular, as the most extensive language in the country, and as people think, in the world. This is a problem.

But it remains the case that all of our official languages are spoken languages, and all of them are the first, or home, language of significant numbers of South Africans.

African children, like children everywhere, need to be taught, in the first years of their schooling, in the language that they know from home. Later, they need to be taught their own language as a subject, like other subjects. South Africa has a programme to achieve these aims, gradually.

African languages, like all other languages, need writers to write them, and readers to read them. In our South African circumstances, these are revolutionary, nation-building tasks. We build our nation by giving life to our heritage.

This CU Course on Languages

This ten-part course will attempt something that hardly exists in South Africa, which is a critique of language use, and language policy, in the country today.

This is a political education course, and it is one of the sixteen CU ten-part courses.

The course will interrogate, and critique, the 11-official-language policy. We will ask if in practice this policy is working as a cover and a blanket under which the nine official African languages are being allowed to fall into greater disrepair. In this regard, we will look at PANSALB, Kha Ri Gude and any other institutions and programmes of this kind that may come to our attention.

We will then propose ways in which language – an institution without a state – can be strengthened with the communist means that we have at our own disposal: Education, Organisation and Mobilisation. Language, as we have seen, is generated communistically. It should be possible to repair and regenerate the same languages communistically.

Hence we will look at the possibility of creating dictionaries by “crowd-sourcing”, using wikis.

And we will look at the possible application of Freirean pedagogical methods for the co-operative learning of languages in study circles, because languages are social, and we think they should be taught socially, as a community of practice, and not as commodified, “qualified” products.

·        To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.