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SADiLaR’s role in supporting Digital Humanities

Ms Mmasibidi Setaka

DH Researcher: Sesotho

09 March 2023

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Funded by:

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SADiLaR

  • South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)
    • is a national centre supported by the DSI and part of SARIR
    • focuses on all official languages of South Africa
    • research and development of language technologies and language-related studies in HSS
    • supports the creation, management and distribution of digital language resources and software
    • free to use resources

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Programmes at SADiLaR

  • SADiLaR runs two programmes
    • Digitization

creation of relevant digital text, speech and multi-modal resources

    • Digital Humanities

Building computational capacity in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)

  • In a way we could be seen as both an enabler of DH Graduates but also a future employer that offers DH Friendly Careers

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SADiLaR Nodes

  • SADiLaR is hosted at the North-West University (NWU)
  • University of Pretoria (Department of African Languages)
  • University of South Africa (Department of African Languages)
  • CSIR (HLT Research Group)
  • North-West University (Centre for Text Technology)
  • Inter-Institutional Centre for Language Development and Assessment (ICELDA)
  • Child Language Development, Stellenbosch University

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  • We do broad national enablement
    • We do not have a typical student flow; most interaction is via awareness sessions or shorter workshops
  • Internal exposure for researchers in SADiLaR
    • Focus on enabling, reskilling and preparing colleagues to be ready for positions that do not yet exist.
    • Afford opportunities for holistic development

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SADiLaR - DH Beyond the Academia

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  • As a national research infrastructure – Broader impact is expected
  • One such area looking at building language resources in African Languages goes beyond the Academic context
    • Areas where SADiLaR has been involved in as part of the year of indigenous languages was language celebrations with different language communities – 2019
    • Need to go further and also allow for various ways and not just academic engagement

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  • Decade of indigenous languages
    • Building digital capacity and understanding in broader communities
  • Other areas of engagement
    • Training to become Wikipedia authors and translating content into African languages
    • Creating open crowdsourced projects where participants can actively take part in transcription, reflection and creating meaning

SADiLaR - DH Beyond the Academia

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ESCALATOR programme

  • Building computational capacity in the HSS
    • Dedicated capacity development and community development programme
  • Digital Humanities Ignite events
    • Creating awareness about DH and new approaches in the HSS

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The Carpentries

  • Develops and teaches workshops on the data skills needed for research

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  • Trains researchers in data skills for efficient, shareable, and reproducible research

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Conclusion

    • SADiLaR is working towards improving DH scholarship
    • Capacity building is important
    • Anyone can request a workshop on our website
    • Anyone can be part of the escalator program and The Capentries
    • All these initiative are free to attend

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Thank you

Ke a leboha

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Mmasibidi.Setaka@nwu.ac.za

https://www.sadilar.org/

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