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Localisation in South AfricaDr Kim Wallmach looks at translation and localisation in South Africa and how mobile phone technology may be the key to bridging the digital divide.Originally published in June 2005 issue of Localisation Focus. To learn more about Localisation Focus, click here. South Africa is a technological leader in its region, with a world-class road infrastructure, banking sector and the largest internet market in Southern Africa (ca. 3 million internet users, mainly young, affluent, educated professionals, as well as a sizeable number of tertiary-level students (Goldstuck, 2001)). The country has a well-developed communications sector, with an emphasis on providing universal telecommunications access to all (ITU, 2001). In the commercial sector, most large corporations have internet servers with a great demand for bandwidth, and in the public sector, most government departments and parastatals have a web presence as well as internet-based e-services to the public (James et al, 2000). However South Africa is also struggling to bridge the huge economic, social and digital disparities between rich and poor. Approximately 50% of the population lives below the poverty line. Another problem is its sheer size. South Africa’s geographic area spans 1,219,912 km2 - the country is as large as Germany, France and Italy put together, with the Kruger National Park alone being approximately the same size as the province of Bavaria. This poses huge challenges for fixed-line telephone infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. So while all major cities and towns in each of the nine provinces have internet points-of-presence, there is insufficient infrastructure and demand for the internet in many rural areas. As a result, the ratio of internet users per capita is only about 6 to 7% (Brown et al 2004: 23). Translation and language policy in South Africa Translation has always played a pivotal role in South Africa. The first Bible translations resulted in the codification of the African languages of South Africa, without which many would have been lost, and in 1925, when English and Afrikaans were declared the two official languages of South Africa, it was only through a massive state-inspired increase in translation activity that Afrikaans (derived from 17th century Dutch with Malay influences) was able to take its place alongside English as an official language. Translation played an equally significant role during the apartheid era: not only was Afrikaans actively promoted, but the publication of government-approved translated textbooks in the African languages was used to support the policy of ‘separate development’ – including separate education systems for different races and primary education in the mothertongue. Translation into the African languages was also vital to state television broadcasting, as well as to the administration of the ‘homelands’ and the various courts of justice (Trew 1994:74). Since South Africa's democratic transition in April 1994, the government has taken up the challenge of moving from two official languages to eleven, which means that more than 98% of the home languages spoken by the total population of 44.8 million people are now accounted for - in contrast to the two-language policy during apartheid, which favoured the white minority. South Africa’s very progressive Constitution (Act No. 108 of 1996) recognises not only the eleven official languages (English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Setswana, Ndebele, Swati, Tsonga and Venda) but also South African Sign Language and the various “heritage” languages (such as French, German, Gujurati, Urdu, Arabic and Chinese). Despite its seemingly cumbersome nature, the eleven-language policy does make sense - all eleven languages are languages of limited diffusion; no language clearly dominates over any other language. English, despite being the language of commerce and the educated elite, is only the fifth most spoken language in the country. In addition, the geographical distribution of the various languages makes it impossible to adopt only one language as official. This is due to the fact that each language is primarily concentrated in a particular area, and might possibly not be spoken in other regions at all (Wallmach 2000). In its National Language Policy Framework (February 2003), the South African government has stipulated that all national government structures and public institutions must adopt one or more working languages. Translation and/or interpreting have been acknowledged as obvious tools to facilitate implementation of this policy. Official government publications must also appear in all eleven languages, or failing this, in six languages on a rotational basis.1 And finally, official correspondence and oral communication with members of the public must occur in the language of the citizen’s choice. Despite official government support for multilingualism, enormous linguistic challenges remain, the greatest being that the technical registers of the African languages are underdeveloped, and the languages themselves are not yet standardised. The available dictionaries are very outdated, and there are few technical dictionaries as yet. What is the scope for localisation? There is clear scope for localisation in South Africa, and a number of initiatives are under way in this area. A project to translate open source software into the eleven official languages is being undertaken by translate.org.za, a non-profit organisation sponsored by the Department of Communications, The Shuttleworth Foundation, Obsidian Systems, St James Software and Hewlett-Packard (South Africa). Morphological parsers, part-ofspeech taggers and speech recognition systems in various languages are currently being developed by a number of universities. The Potchefstroom Campus of North- West University in particular is involved in localising software and developing proofing tools for the commercial market (i.e. for Microsoft Office 2003), primarily focussing on spell checkers for Afrikaans, Setswana, Northern Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa. Members of the Localisation Research Centre in Ireland are currently assisting lecturers at the University of South Africa in setting up an online terminology database for the eleven languages, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS terminology and police terminology. As yet, only a handful of local translation agencies are involved in localisation. Agency employees tend to be freelancers, often based geographically far apart. The best translators in African languages tend to be older, with an excellent command of their first languages, but with poor computer skills in comparison to their younger counterparts. Those employed full-time at universities do have broadband acccess, but most domestic access is via dial-up modems, which can be problematic and expensive when downloading large files. Translation memory systems are expensive and not widely used. In the area of mobile phone localisation, Nokia has introduced an Africanlanguage menu option which allows customers to read their phone menus in Afrikaans, Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu or Swahili. Sony Ericsson first offered an African-language menu in 2002, with Zulu and Sotho being supported. Samsung also has an African language option on its phones. Together with subsidised mobile phones, booming subscriber growth and the launch in October 2004 of low-cost bank accounts and cellphone banking services, this has meant that 13 million previously ‘unbanked’ citizens living in rural areas can now conduct business in their own languages (Mantu 2004). Mobile phones would seem to be the most effective means of closing the ‘digital divide’ to boost growth. An article in The Economist (March 12, 2005:78) suggests that in a typical developing country, an increase of 10 mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points. Africa’s mobile phone customer growth rate is the highest in the world - and the scope for growth is enormous, since the 82 million GSM customers in Africa represent a mere 9.25% market penetration into the African population (Vodaworld Magazine 2005: 28). Looking to the future, there are boundless opportunities for mobile phone localisation, given booming subscriber growth and investment by South African companies in other African countries. But demand for broadband access in South Africa is also set to grow with the introduction of subsidised laptops and PCs by mobile phone and wireless network operators in 2005/6. Vodacom alone intends to introduce two million subsidised bundled laptops to South Africa, which will be available when a customer takes out a 3G contract. This could redefine internet access if coupled with localised web content. List of sources: "Breaking Africa's mobile barriers." 2005. Vodaworld Magazine, Autumn. Brown, I., Hoppe, R. Mugera, P., Newman, P. & Stander, A. 2004. The impact of national environment on the adoption of internet banking: Comparing Singapore and South Africa. Journal of Global Information Management, 12(2): 1-26, April-June. "Calling across the divide", The Economist, March 12, 2005: 78. CIA: Central Intelligence Agency, 2001. The World Fact Book 2001. CIA, http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook Accessed: 30 April 2004. Goldstuck, A. 2001. South Africa - how many use websites and who are they? Balancing Act news update, 71, http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing -act_71.html. Accessed: 18 January 2002. ITU: International Telecommunications Union.2001. South Africa Country Profile. ITU telecommunication Indicators Update, 3, 4, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/update/pdf/Update_3_02.pdf. Accessed 1 August 2002. James, T. Esselaar, P., Bowmaker-Falconer, A. Quansah, Y., Sibthorpe, C., Mosebi, J. & Mokoena, T. 2000. A survey of the IT industry and related jobs and skills in South Africa. South African Industry Strategy (SAITIS) Baseline Studies, http://www.dti.gov.za/saitis/studies/jobs_skills/index.html. Accessed: 5 August 2002. Mantu, R. 2004. "Low income earners to afford banking." BuaNews Online homepage (compiled by the South African Government Communication and Information System (GCIS)). (Accessed: 1 May 2005). Trew, R. 1994. The development of training models for African language translators and interpreters. In Kruger, A. (ed) New perspectives on teachingtranslators and interpreters in South Africa. Selected papers of an international conference hosted on 4-5 March 1993 by the Linguistics Department of the University of South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Wallmach, K. 2000. "Examining simultaneous interpreting norms and strategies in a South African legislative context: a pilot corpus analysis". Language Matters, vol. 31: 198-221. Dr Kim Wallmach teaches translation and interpreting at the University of South Africa and is joint director of the BA degree programme in court interpreting. She is also co-owner of Multilingua Translation/Interpretation Services cc, an agency which provides interpreting and translation services in the eleven official languages of South Africa. The agency has recently become involved in localisation and validation projects. She can be reached at translateNOSPAM@iafrica.com or kimNOSPAM@multilingua.co.za (remove NOSPAM to email).
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