WORD-WISE

AFRICA IS HOME TO OVER 2,000 INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES, MAKING IT THE MOST LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE CONTINENT IN THE WORLD. INITIATIVES LIKE GOOGLE'S AI GLOSSARY AND PanSALB'S WORK HIGHLIGHT THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING AFRICAN LANGUAGES INTO THE LEXICON OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.

- By Sasha Star

Terms like 'artificial intelligence' and 'chatbot' have found their way into our everyday vocabulary, yet, African languages have been largely left out of the technology conversation—until now.

"For information to be useful and accessible, barriers need to be lowered so that it can be used by everyone," says Google's Country Director for South Africa, Kabelo Makwane, to FORBES AFRICA.

It is that philosophy that underpins Google's new AI Glossary which introduces isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, and Swahili words into the digital lexicon. Amongst the 100 terms are phrases used in the tech space like 'open source' (umthombo ovulekile), 'deepfake' (ifihlabuwuwa) and 'conversational AI' (ingxoxo yobuhlakani obakhiwe).

"There were fierce disagreements about some meanings," Makwane admits. "People have different interpretations of the same words and the meaning can also completely change depending on the context."