Academy of African Languages and Sciencehttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/138052024-03-29T03:57:05Z2024-03-29T03:57:05ZSyllabification and parameter optimisation in Zulu to English machine translationKotzé, GideonWolff, Friedelhttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/198222015-12-12T01:00:09Z2015-12-10T00:00:00ZSyllabification and parameter optimisation in Zulu to English machine translation
Kotzé, Gideon; Wolff, Friedel
We present a series of experiments involving the machine translation of Zulu to English using a well-known statistical software system. Due to morphological complexity and relative scarcity of resources, the case of Zulu is challenging. Against a selection of baseline models, we show that a relatively naive approach of dividing Zulu words into syllables leads to a surprising improvement. We further improve on this model through manual configuration changes. Our best model significantly outperforms the baseline models (BLEU measure, at p < 0.001) even when they are optimised to a similar degree, only falling short of the well-known Morfessor morphological analyser that makes use of relatively sophisticated algorithms. These experiments suggest that even a simple optimisation procedure can improve the quality of this approach to a significant degree. This is promising particularly because it improves on a mostly language independent approach — at least within the same language family. Our work also drives the point home that sub-lexical alignment for Zulu is crucial for improved translation quality.
2015-12-10T00:00:00ZExperiments with syllable-based English-Zulu alignmentKotzé, GideonWolff, Friedelhttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/138692015-10-13T11:11:16Z2014-05-01T00:00:00ZExperiments with syllable-based English-Zulu alignment
Kotzé, Gideon; Wolff, Friedel
As a morphologically complex language, Zulu has notable challenges aligning with English. One of the biggest concerns for statistical machine translation is the fact that the morphological complexity leads to a large number of words for which there exist very few examples in a corpus. To address the problem, we set about establishing an experimental baseline for lexical alignment by naively dividing the Zulu text into syllables, resembling its morphemes. A small quantitative as well as a more thorough qualitative evaluation suggests that our approach has merit, although certain issues remain. Although we have not yet determined the effect of this approach on machine translation, our first experiments suggest that an aligned parallel corpus with reasonable alignment accuracy can be created for a language pair, one of which is under-resourced, in as little as a few days. Furthermore, since very little language-specific knowledge was required for this task, our approach can almost certainly be applied to other language pairs and perhaps for other tasks as well.
2014-05-01T00:00:00ZAn African Cultural Renaissance Perspective on Constitutionalism, Democracy, Peace, Justice and Shared Values: Challenges & Stakes for Statehood and Nation-buildingMboup, Samba Burihttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/51482015-10-13T11:12:29Z2011-01-08T00:00:00ZAn African Cultural Renaissance Perspective on Constitutionalism, Democracy, Peace, Justice and Shared Values: Challenges & Stakes for Statehood and Nation-building
Mboup, Samba Buri
Beyond folklore, dance, music, culture refers, in a more substantive and comprehensive
way, to the sum of ideas, knowledge systems and instrumentalities (institutional,
scientific, technological and political) by means of which a people conceives and
organises their relationship to space and time, in the process of production and
reproduction of their existence and social life: economic activity as a whole,
architecture, indigenous educational and health systems, principles and patterns of
institutional and political organization, etc. For a given people, culture encompasses
among others: the best practices and examples set by immortal figures and lessons
learned during the richest hours of their history; their generic worldview, basic
principles of life and value systems; their language (s) and spirituality; their vision of
Self and Other including generic mental images and archetypes etc.
2011-01-08T00:00:00ZChallenges and stakes in the africanisation process of research, scholarship and university curricula, in the context of Globalisation & in the perspective of African RenaissanceMboup, Samba Burihttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/51472015-10-13T11:12:29Z2008-01-10T00:00:00ZChallenges and stakes in the africanisation process of research, scholarship and university curricula, in the context of Globalisation & in the perspective of African Renaissance
Mboup, Samba Buri
African Renaissance can be viewed as an alternative and global project of society and civilization, aiming at the creation of the objective conditions for the re-birth of Africa as a scientific, technological as well as economic and political pole of initiative and decision making on its own, in the world of to-day and to-morrow.
2008-01-10T00:00:00Z