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acalan-au.bsky.social
ACALAN
@acalan-au.bsky.social
86 followers 160 following 13 posts
African Academy of Languages
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acalan-au.bsky.social
Hiring the next generation of leadership for African Languages: jobs.au.int/job/Executiv...
Executive Secretary (ACALAN)
Executive Secretary (ACALAN)
jobs.au.int
August 21, 2025 at 12:35 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
The view of African languages from low-Earth orbit:

www.linkedin.com/posts/clear-...
🗣️ “There are a billion and half people speaking in Africa and they have… | CLEAR Global
🗣️ “There are a billion and half people speaking in Africa and they have almost nothing for their own languages, although those are the languages they use every day.” Martin Benjamin joins Aimee Ansa...
www.linkedin.com
May 12, 2025 at 11:22 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
This is TODAY - still 4 hours to register.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Feb 28, 2025 02:00 PM Nairobi

zoom.us/meeting/regi...
February 28, 2025 at 6:57 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
The language technology platform for Africa that ACALAN is questing to implement, being revealed at the UNESCO #LT4all conference (Language Technology for All) in Paris.

#indigenouslanguages
February 25, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
Experts and stakeholders from around the world are meeting in Paris today regarding Language Technology for the billions who speak languages other than the usual suspects.

Today's program at UNESCO #LT4all conference
www.lt4all2025.eu/full-program...

#indigenouslanguages
February 25, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
Recalling this rather glowing BBC piece from a few years back: www.bbc.com/news/technol.... Tech jobs in Africa are great when they have concern for fairness and well being, not when they are the cheapest way to extract max human labor.

kamu.si/introducing-kamfupi - I hope we're better in Nairobi!!
February 12, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
🤔 What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech? Aimee Ansari discusses Nwulite Obodo Open Data License, a license for sharing African language datasets. Developed by Data Science Law Lab at the University of Pretoria, with others in South Africa and Kenya.
www.linkedin.com/posts/aimee-...
Aimee Ansari on LinkedIn: What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech: Nwulite Obodo Open Data…
Data licensing doesn't sound interesting, but I could do a whole series on just this! Here's a really interesting initiative from the Data Science Law Lab…
www.linkedin.com
February 5, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
Cheetah, an open-source toolkit developed by UBC-NLP, focusing on Natural Language Processing for African languages. Cheetah works *experimentally* in 517 African languages, a step on the road toward equitable NLP for non-lucrative languages.

www.linkedin.com/posts/clear-...
CLEAR Global on LinkedIn: #languageinclusion #lowresourcetech
🚀 What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech? 🤔 Welcome to our newest monthly series where we showcase recent advancements and insights into…
www.linkedin.com
February 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
January 26, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
Business Daily Africa: Harnessing power of language, tech to boost SME digital trade

kamu.si/language-tec...
Harnessing power of language, tech to boost SME digital trade
Looking at the digital technologies powering e-commerce in the 21st century, one might be led to assume that a handful of global languages suffice for trade and communication.
kamu.si
January 16, 2025 at 2:07 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
The African Languages group on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/groups/46760...
January 15, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
Mostly for Africans...
Are you positioned to go through the language list for your country and find errors in what is included?
Languages might be
• missing
• double-listed with alternate names
• listed with an alternate name instead of the primary
• not a local mother tongue
kamu.si/country-grid...
Country Grid - Languages in Africa
kamu.si
January 14, 2025 at 6:57 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
Workers at a construction site in Kigali, Rwanda, carrying loads of cement on their heads, October 2010
January 6, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by ACALAN
pirateprofessor.bsky.social
Tanzania has a population of 62,000,000.
0.09 dental personnel per 10,000 people.
That is, about 1 dentist for every 6 million people.
My first thought on looking up the stat was, "It can't be THAT bad, can it?"
December 31, 2024 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by ACALAN
kamusi.org
A first attempt to list every language spoken in Africa, per country. Please be brutal in finding things to fix!

kamu.si/country-grid...
Country Grid - Languages in Africa
kamu.si
December 24, 2024 at 4:29 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
Courtesy of an ACALAN language and technology expert on our Committee for African Languages in Cyberspace...
teachyoubackwards.com Teach You Backwards @teachyoubackwards.com · Dec 9
Nelson Mandela: "Lead from the back - and let others believe they are in front"
A human translated that into Japanese.
Google Translate's return to English: "Teach you backwards - and make you believe that are at the top are you guys"

Read the (free) book on Google Translate! kamu.si/tyb-overview
Nelson Mandela said, "Lead from the back - and let others believe they are in front." After a real person translated that into Japanese, Google Translate brought it back to English as "Teach you backwards - and make you believe that are at the top are you guys."
December 9, 2024 at 7:07 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
The Kam4D matrix will sit as the data core of the comprehensive and interactive platform that ACALAN has planned for African languages, for which we are currently mobilizing resources.
kamusi.org kamusi.org @kamusi.org · Dec 5
Fantastic illustration of the basic concept of the unfunded temporal dimension planned for the Kamusi data matrix, the "4" in Kam4D.

kamu.si/kam4d-time - if you are not taken right to the relevant section (browsers work funny), look for "time" in the table of contents, or scroll
December 5, 2024 at 8:49 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
We are proud to endorse and participate in the upcoming Language Technology for All conference, 24 - 26 February.

Advancing Humanism through Language Technologies
Paris, UNESCO Headquarters

www.lt4all2025.eu
www.lt4all2025.eu/endorsers

#lt4all2025
LT4All 2025 – Language Technologies for All
www.lt4all2025.eu
December 4, 2024 at 7:07 PM
acalan-au.bsky.social
A "universal translator" that ignores African languages is not "universal" - it excludes 1.5 billion people from view.

"Lara's error rate is just 2.4 per thousand words" does not apply to African languages, where the error rate is 1000/1000 words.

translated.com/the-power-of...
The Power of Languages
Today, we held a unique event exploring the power of languages and our progress towards a universal translator. We introduced Lara, the world's best translation AI, along with new tools to support tra...
translated.com
November 27, 2024 at 7:22 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
Most linguistic data for most African languages has not been digitized in any meaningful way. Yet most of the tiny attention - research and funding - to digital tools for African languages is fixated on AI

If LLMs bug out for languages with large language data, what happens where the data is small?
lingthusiasm.bsky.social Lingthusiasm @lingthusiasm.bsky.social · Nov 22
Humans learn a new word by attaching it to a set of concepts in the real world. Computers “learn” a new word by creating associations with other words

In this episode we get enthusiastic about how computers process language with @emilymbender.bsky.social
98: Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender
When a human learns a new word, we're learning to attach that word to a set of concepts in the real world. When a computer
soundcloud.com
November 27, 2024 at 5:32 AM
acalan-au.bsky.social
Welcome to ACALAN on BlueSky. We look forward to discussions regarding African languages!
November 25, 2024 at 11:19 AM