Overview

The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) is a national centre supported by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) as part of the new South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (SARIR). SADiLaR has an enabling function, with a focus on all official languages of South Africa, supporting research and development in the domains of language technologies and language-related studies in the humanities and social sciences. The Centre supports the creation, management and distribution of digital language resources, as well as applicable software, which are freely available for research purposes through the Language Resource Catalogue. SADiLaR is a multi-partner entity with the North-West University (NWU) functioning as host as well as hub of a network of linked nodes, comprising: - 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); and - Inter-Institutional Centre for Language Development and Assessment (ICELDA). It is foreseen that the number of nodes will increase in future as new functional nodes develop. SADiLaR runs two programmes: 1. A digitisation programme, which entails the systematic creation of relevant digital text, speech and multi-modal resources related to all official languages of South Africa. The development of appropriate natural language processing software tools for research and development purposes are included as part of the digitisation programme. 2. A Digital Humanities programme, which facilitates the building of research capacity by promoting and supporting the use of digital data and innovative methodological approaches within the Humanities and Social Sciences. SADiLaR’s enabling function impacts at least three domains: 1. Language technology domain 2. Humanities and social sciences domain 3. Socio-economic domain