Comments on: Tackling Language with Technology in Africa

By: Carole

Carole — Sat, 15 May 2010 20:47:40 +0000

Hello Hash,
My friend Cheri who is an American Teaching French classes to high school students in California at Notre Dame suggested your link. She knew that I would be interested since I am a native French speaker originally for Gabon (sister country to Cameroun), raised in France and living in the US. I’ve traveled a lot and speaks several languages like many Africans and Europeans, and you 🙂 (French, Spanish, English, Fang, Ndumu, battling to maintain my Italian, and learning Portuguese – Next for me is Mandarin… Lol)
I sometimes get invited by teachers to speak and share with students, and I do enjoy it. I do like what your website tells, and your parents were amazing and what a great gift to share with you!
I feel that I could help occasionally with your translations, therefore I’d like to invite you to not hesitate to contact me when the need arise again. My website is http://www.lookelsewheretranslation.com
Some Universities, like Stanford for example, do send their students to Africa to live and learn languages, like Fang in Gabon (I helped some of them find lodging and settle in fang populated areas so that they can learn it much easier) – my point is that it might be of interest to you to connect with them to find out who is going in areas you are interested in, and to work something out with them (It will allow you to cover more grounds and to collect relevant info too.)
Anyway, you must already have a lot going on, and again do not hesitate to contact me.
Great job! And very interesting to learn about your traveling through language.
Cheers!
Carole

By: Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » African Ingenuity Blogwatch

Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » African Ingenuity Blogwatch — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:01:06 +0000

[…] Tackling Language with Technology in Africa. […]

By: Bev Trayner

Bev Trayner — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:45:26 +0000

Thanks for those links. I’m interested in all projects that are tackling language with technology.

By: Munashe

Munashe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:27:51 +0000

thats is interesting, someone is trying to crack the language nut.

you are right, the most common case you would never even hear of francophone web startups because in English speaking african countries they get no attention, for how can you use them.

By: ThÃ©o

ThÃ©o — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:43:22 +0000

Thank you, Hash, for speaking about Ivoire-Blog. We want to have contacts with anglophone techies like you, but we don’t know how. I think you know many things that we can learn.

By: Leo

Leo — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:23:32 +0000

One of the things that we tried to tackle with Zambian languages is the creation of a site for community input of words called Zanglish. Translation is a goal, but we felt starting with a catalog of words would be a necessity. Things are at an infant stage and sometimes it seems like moving to a product such as Glossword would reap more benefits for a new dictionary site. Regardless, I think it's paramount that all of us, especially those of us who have a connection with Africa, continue to put our focus toward developing and preserving the languages of our country.

By: Mwangi- the Displaced African

Mwangi- the Displaced African — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:04:46 +0000

Hey,
The Kamusi Project is a God-send. I began using it a while ago and it’s absolutely fantastic and helped remind me of those Swahili words that I may have forgotten or not been sure of.
I think Julius Nyerere is an absolute genius for making Tanzania a single-language culture. In my opinion, it would be absolutely fantastic and mutually beneficial if Kiswahili were to spread throughout Africa and become our official language on the continent – it is such a complex, beautiful language…..
Have you had exposure to Timothy Ferriss and his work with language learning? I am yet to experiment with his techniques for learning language but he seems to be a credible teacher?

By: Satyam

Satyam — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:54:03 +0000

I am a french web consultant with caribean and african origins.

I got a blog making reviews on the french african (and caribbean) web. I will be very pleased to translate for you some of my reviews.

Think about it and mail me !!

http://www.lewebmulticulturel.fr/

By: David McQueen

David McQueen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:42:03 +0000

I was just speaking to a couple of people last week about this said thing. The project I am working on I wanted to start of English, migrate to French, then adopt Arabic, Swahili and possibly Portuguese.

This post is on point. Much food for thought.

By: JKE

JKE — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:30:42 +0000

Oh and about Arabic: I took evening classes in Arabic three years ago, nothing much, just 20h, but it was a good start and so nice to see the similarities between Swa & Arabic. Really liked it. Sijui about this in the US, but it really makes sense for a start.