To develop, promote and protect the 11 official languages through policy formulation, legislation and the implementation of the language policy in order to allow South Africans to realise their language rights.
1. Language Planning Directorate
- The core functions of this Unit are to:
- Plan, conceptualise, develop and review language policies/legislation
- Conduct language policy/legislation consultations through workshops, meetings, seminars and conferences. For instance the DAC established a National Language Forum in an effort to encourage language discourse.
- Assist provinces and local government with the development of their language policies.
- Facilitate the establishment of Language Units within government departments.
- Monitor and evaluate language policy implementation (e.g. language units, development of policies by other government departments and provinces).
- Build capacity for language facilitation by providing financial assistance to Institutions of Higher Learning for language study through a Bursary Scheme.
- Oversee Language Research and Development Centres (LRDCs) for language enhancement through terminology development and research; literature development; writing and publishing; establishment of heritage and language museums and community outreache programmes.
- Facilitate the development and promotion of literature.
- Plan, coordinate and facilitate multimedia communication campaigns.
- Facilitate the establishment of Language Units within government departments.
- Facilitate the establishment of the South African Language Practitioners’ Council (SALPC).
- Oversee and maintain the language policy development database.
2. Terminology Coordination Section Directorate
Terminology List
The lists are as follows:
The Natural science list is divided into:
Completed Terminology Projects
Multilingual Mathematics Dictionary Grade R- 6
- The Multilingual Mathematics Dictionary forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- Approximately 1 000 entries have been documented for this project.
- This dictionary was published in June 2003 and 25 000 copies had been received for distribution to mainly primary schools.
- The Department of Education distributed approximately 20 500 copies circuit offices in the provinces.
Natural Sciences And Technology Grade 4 - 6
- The Natural Sciences and Technology Project forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- The dictionary was published in 2005.
- The corpus comprises approximately 2 900 entries.
Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology Project
- The Multilingual Parliamentary/Political terminology project comprises terms of both parliamentary and political nature and aims at developing parliamentary and political terms in African languages to promote multilingualism in parliament and South Africa in general.
- This terminology list was published in 2005. The corpus comprises approximately 480 entries.
Information, Communication And Technology (ICT)
- The Department of Communication approached the Terminology Coordination Section (TCS) of the National Language Service (NLS) to assist in coordinating the development of information technology terminologies in all official languages of South Africa.
- This dictionary was completed and published in 2005. The corpus comprises 164 entries and will be added to the Department’s website as soon as possible.
Guidelines For Terminology Coordination And Management
- The NLS compiled this document to provide guidelines to both internal staff and external collaborators on various phases, aspects and procedures of compiling and manipulating terminological data.
- The Guidelines provide information in respect of needs assessments, planning terminology projects, constituting terminology committees and dealing with various tasks involved in finalizing equivalents in order to provide the target language text.
- The Guidelines clearly outline the role and duties of the different role-players in the terminology production network.
Current Projects: HIV/AIDS
- The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) together with the Department of Health (DoH) identified the need to review the ground text, which was compiled some years ago.
- The corpus comprises approximately 700 terms.
- The ground text has been finalised and the data has been sent to the various Language Research and Development Centres (LRDCs) for supplying equivalents in all the African languages.
School Project: Human, Social, Economic and Management
Sciences (HSEMS) Intermediate Phase
- Data was collected from relevant materials used in education and the corpus comprises approximately 3 000 terms.
- The ground text compilation has been completed and the process of supplying equivalents in all the African languages has started.
School Project: Natural Sciences and Technology Grade 7-12
- The Natural Sciences and Technology Project forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- The ground text compilation has been completed and the data is in the process of being verified by a subject field specialist.
- After completion of this process the data will go to collaborating groups for supplying equivalents in all the African languages.
School Project: Mathematics Grade 7-12
- The Multilingual Mathematics Dictionary forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- The final editing is currently being done on the ground text. As soon as this process has been finalised the data will go to collaborating groups for supplying equivalents in all the African languages.
School Project: Life Orientation Intermediate Phase
- The Life Orientation Project forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- The ground text is in the process of being finalised after which it will go to a subject field specialist for verification.
School Project: Arts and Culture Intermediate Phase
- The Arts and Culture Project forms part of the Education Project initiated by the then Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
- The ground text is in the process of being finalised after which it will go to a subject field specialist for verification.
Soccer Terms
- This project was identified with the Soccer World Cup of 2010 in mind.
- This project aims at developing soccer terms in African languages to promote multilingualism in the domain of sport and South Africa in general.
- The ground text has been finalised and a subject field specialist has been co-opted to verify the content.
Translation-Oriented Terminology Project
- This termbase was first and foremost established for the benefit of translators in the NLS.
- Translated documents (ground text as well as equivalents in all the other languages) are used as the source of this termbase.
- This project is still in the trial phase.
3. Human Language Technologies (HTL) Directorate
- The aim of the DAC HLT initiative is to actualise the constitutional provision and National Language Policy Framework (NLPF) requirement on the development and use of South African Languages through the development of human language technology products in the official languages.
- The HLT Unit commissioned three projects which will contribute to the implementation of the National Language Policy Framework.
- To enhance the quality of documents rendered in the official languages or translated into them, a two-year project to develop spellcheckers customised for government purposes for ten official languages was commissioned. A large number of licences will be made available to government language offices and delivery is scheduled for the beginning of 2009.
- Another project is the development of machine-aided translation tools In order to improve the speed, consistency and quality of translation of official documents in government offices and legislatures, as well as in other language offices. Good progress is being made towards the development of an integrated translation solution.
- Thirdly, a multilingual telephone-based system that will enable callers to access government services in the official language of their choice through a simple speech-orientated interface that is suitable for users with limited or no literacy in all 11 languages is being developed over three years. The project is in its second year and already promising milestones have been reached.
- Besides the specific deliverables the projects will also produce spin-offs like capacity building in the field of HLT, creation of jobs for linguists and other specialists, published research articles and collections of reusable text and speech data.
- Another goal is the establishment of a National Centre for HLT. The Centre will serve as a repository for reusable high-level digitised and annotated text and speech data, conforming to international standards, in all eleven official languages, to support the creation of appropriate multilingual applications in all the official languages of South Africa. It will also form the hub of HLT activities in the country, facilitating research, development and capacity building conducive to building a flourishing HLT industry.
4. Translation and Editing (T&E) Directorate
- Translation and Editing has two components that translate and edit the official documents with the aim of facilitating communication between the government and the public.
- This process promotes good governance by making information and resources accessible to the public.
- The official documents are translated form English into ten official languages and vice versa.
- The section translates documents for the national and provincial government departments, government entities, Presidency, parliament and the parastatals.
- These documents include Acts, regulations, manuals, notices, social grants and health documents.
back to top |
