IsiNdebele has enjoyed a major boost on Wikipedia, thanks to the successful completion of the first phase of the SWiP Project, a collaborative initiative by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), the free encyclopaedia (Wikipedia), and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). The SWiP Project,
launched in September last year, aims to increase the digital footprint of South Africa’s indigenous languages by creating and training a community of indigenous language users that submit and translate content on the free, online encyclopaedia platform.
While all the South African languages are important, the project kicked off with a special focus on isiNdebele, which had 11 articles on Wikipedia. Thanks to the SWiP Project series of training workshops across South Africa during Phase One of the project, this number has jumped to an impressive 128 articles in less than a year.
"We are dedicated to digitising and preserving South African languages for future generations and are proud of the progress made by our collaborative flagship project in a very short time,” says Prof Langa Khumalo, the executive director of SADiLaR. “We are confident that the next phase of the project will yield even better results. Our languages are an integral part of our identities and diverse cultures and deserve to be digitally documented for improved access and posterity. SWiP provides our communities with a platform to grow our languages in the digital space.”
Paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse internet
Besides the 128 articles created in isiNdebele, participants have created 463 new articles, edited 854 existing ones, and made a total of 1.78k edits across multiple languages. These efforts have resulted in the addition of 163k words, 979 references, and 69 photos to the online encyclopedia. With 277 active editors and over 11.5 million article views over a period of six months, the project is making a substantial impact on increasing the visibility of African languages and knowledge on the global stage. This is according to the SWiP Wikimedia dashboard report.
"The SWiP Project, through this strategic partnership between SADiLaR, Wikimedia ZA, and PanSALB, underscores the critical importance of collaboration in advancing African languages and content online,” comments Bobby Shabangu, president of Wikimedia ZA (the South African chapter of Wikimedia movement). “By pooling our resources and expertise, we are making significant strides in increasing the presence of African languages and rich cultural content on Wikipedia. Together, we are paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse internet."
Phase Two of the SWiP project
The second phase of the SWiP project will kick off in November 2024 and run until the end of October 2027. The objectives include conducting workshops at various institutions to enhance the understanding of how Wikipedia can be leveraged for educational benefit; hosting Train-the-Trainer Workshops to lead in the development of facilitators who can lead workshops across universities; and running an Edit-a-thons to bring together language communities for contribution into Wikipedia and keep the momentum going and encourage further collaboration.
“One of the reasons for PanSALB’s involvement was the need to ensure that the internet reflects the diversity of languages in South Africa,” Julius Dantile, executive head of languages at PanSALB says. “The successful completion of Phase One of the project gives us confidence that the data will show linguistic diversity in the digital world.
"We acknowledge that there is still a lot of progress to be made to achieve fair representation on platforms such as Wikipedia. Therefore, we see this collaboration as a significant step towards instilling a culture of writing in indigenous African languages on digital platforms. The outcome of this project may increase corpora which will assist the use of artificial intelligence through indigenous African languages.”
SWiP Writing Competition
Are you passionate about language preservation and the sharing of knowledge? Take part in the SWiP Project's Writing Competition from 24 July to 19 August 2024 and stand a chance to win a fantastic prize and bragging rights, while contributing to the preservation of South Africa's unique languages and cultures. Entry is free and all you need to do is create an article in Wikipedia in any of the South African languages. Prizes will be awarded to the first- and second-best articles in each official language and consist of exciting goodie bags, packed with surprises. Find out more here.
