Wiring Kenyan languages for the global virtual age: An audit of the human language technology resources.
Edward Ombui, Lawrence Muchemi · 2015
Whereas we recognize the advancement of computing and internet technologies over the years and its impact in the areas of health, education, government, etc., there is increasing cognizance that the languages used in these technologies will have a far reaching impact in terms of accessibility and usability by a wider audience. European languages and specifically English is considered the lingua franca of computing and the Internet due to the vast amount of language resources available in these languages. Does this therefore exacerbate the language and technology gap, especially in regards to African languages? This research is motivated by this question and begins to tackle a strand of the overarching language technology issue by auditing the human language technologies for Kenyan languages. The research uses the Basic Language Resource Kit (BLARK) to do the inventory. This method has been successfully used to conduct language resources surveys in other countries.