View source for Ugandan Languages: Vitality, Resources and Capacity Building


[[File:New-Sigul-logo.png|right|200px]]

<span style="color: green;font-size:120%"> '' '''We celebrate 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages''' '' </span>

<div style="font-size:140%;"> To honor the Indigenous languages of Uganda, the Department of African Languages & the Department of Information Systems organize a Language Fair with great speeches and exciting exhibitions. The Language Fair is followed by two days of information about the latest in language technologies accompanied by hands-on workshops in text and speech processing. </div>

<div style="font-size:140%;">The Event is sponsored by SIGUL, a joint Special Interest Group for Under-resourced Languages of the European Language Resources Association (ELRA), and of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).</div>



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'''Where:  Makerere University''', 
===='''Message from the local organizers on November 7th, 2019'''====
<div style="  font-size:140%;"> ''It's with regret that we announce a cancellation of this workshop, which we all were looking forward to.'' 
''Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have to postpone the event until a new date is found. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you.''</div>
ay

===='''Ugandan Language Fair''' ==== 

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'''PLACE:''' '''CIT Block B, College of Computing and Information Sciences, Makerere University'''

The fair welcomes you to attend  two stimulating keynote speeches and a poster session with presentations showcasing initiatives in local language development.

'''Welcoming Speech  by Dr. Gilbert Gumoshabe, Head of the Department of African Languages'''


'''Welcoming Speech by Dr. Peter Nabende, Head of the School of Computing and Information Technology


===== <span style="color: green">'''KEYNOTES'''</span>=====

'''Judge Daniel David Ntanda Nsereko'''   

[[File:Daniel Nesereko.jpeg|left|200px]] 
''' Ugandan Indigenous Languages: Our Heritage '''
Professor Ntanda Nsereko is a judge at the International Criminal Court at Den Hagues. He has taught law at Makerere University and the University of Botswana. Professor Ntanda Nsereko is an ardent promoter of Luganda and all indigenous Ugandan languages and an author of books and articles on law and Human Rights. He has also translated Sophocles'  Antigone into Luganda, and published an English-Luganda dictionary of law terms.




















'''Professor Manuel Muranga'''

[[File:MMuranga.jpeg|left|200px]] '''The case of Rukiga - A discussion of language development and language standardization. '''  
Professor Muranga, Kabale University, has been active in the promotion of mother tongues since the introduction of Runyakitara at Makerere in 1990.
He has  taught  Runyakitara at the Uganda Christian University.

Professor Muranga will talk about language diversity in Uganda and about Runyakitara.
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 <span style="color: green">'''REFRESHMENTS'''</span>

=====<span style="color: green">'''EXHIBITION'''</span>=====

<br>
'''PLACE:''' '''CIT Block B, College of Computing and Information Sciences, Makerere University'''

During the presentation session you are invited to visit stands. Here you hear more about the work for the development of Uganda's local languages. You can attend a book launch by
Dorika Production and a Software Launch by Polytext AS, a Norwegian software company.





[[File:Dorika.jpg|left|300px]]<span style="font-size:120%"> Dorika Publications was founded by the writer Waalabyeki Magoba. It is committed to producing quality Luganda literature to create  a permanent yearning  for reading in children and adults.</span> 




BOOK LAUNCHING EVENT






 [[File:Polytext Final.png| left | 300px |linguistic technology]] <span style="font-size:120%">Polytext is a small Norwegian software company. It produces linguistic tools and resources especially for lesser-resourced languages.</span>
'<span style="font-size:120%"></span>

LAUNCH OF A SPELL CHECKER FOR LUGANDA





[[File:Dema LOGO.jpg|left|150px]]  DEMA Language Solutions. DEMA is a small company that offers LANGUAGE SOLUTIONS. It is specialized in Translations, Localisation, Transcription and Editing Services. 

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===='''Workshop - Day 1'''  ====

'''PLACE:''' '''CIT Block B, College of Computing and Information Sciences, Makerere University'''

====='''SPEECH TECHNOLOGY'''=====

<span style="font-size:120%"> Speaker:  Prof. '''Laurent Besacier''':</span> 

<span style="font-size:120%"> '''Speech technologies for low resource languages: an introduction</span'''>


[[File:Laurent besacier .jpg|left]] Professor Besacier is a Computer Scientist at the University of  Grenoble, France, and Co-chair and ISCA liaison representative of the Special Interest Group for Under-resourced Languages (SIGUL) at ELRA (European Language Resources Association).













====='''CORPUS BUILDING'''===== 

<span style="font-size:120%">Speaker: Prof. '''Dorothee Beermann:'''  

'''Creation of African language resources  - Corpora'''.</span>

[[File:Dorothee beermann-2019.JPG|left |200x182px]] 

Professor Beermann is a Linguist at the University of Science and Technology, Norway.
She is one of the Co-founders of Polytext and a contributor to SIGUL at ELRA (European Language Resources Association). She is a formal linguist
with long experience in creating Interlinear Glossed Texts corpora for less-resourced languages.

Prof. Beermann's talk will be accompanied by a hands-on tutorial on the creation of annotated text corpora.
<br>







===== '''TUTORIALS'''=====

<span style="color: green">'''REGISTRATION REQUIRED'''</span>


Tutorial 1  Speech technology  (Prof Besacier):   on speech data collection and annotation software.

Tutorial 2 Corpus creation  (Prof. Beermann)

Tutorial 3  Luganda spell checker  (Tormod Haugland, Polytext) 

[[File:Haugland (2).jpg|left|200px]] 
Tormod Haugland is one of the Co-founders and the CEO of Polytext. He has worked with computational linguistics since 2015, in his capacity as technical developer and director for the research project Typecraft, before Co-founding Polytext. He holds an M.Sc. in Abstract Algebra and a B.Sc. in Computer Science. 





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===='''Workshop - Day 2''' ====

<br>
'''PLACE:''' '''CIT Block B, College of Computing and Information Sciences, Makerere University'''
<br>




===== '''LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION'''=====

Speaker: Prof. '''Laurent Bescacier'''

<span style="font-size:120%">'''Computational language documentation: an introduction'''</span>

===== '''TUTORIALS'''=====

<span style="color: green">'''REGISTRATION REQUIRED'''</span>


Tutorial 1  Speech technology  (Prof Besacier):   on speech data collection and annotation software.

Tutorial 2 Corpus creation  (Prof. Beermann)

Tutorial 3  Luganda spell checker  (Tormod Haugland, Polytext) 

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