As we look back at a successful 2023 for the Localisation Research Centre, we would like to give you an update on what the year has brought for us, as well as an outlook on our plans for 2024.
Alumni group
In 2023 we decided to form an alumni group with the goal of supporting networking between former and current students, researchers and staff. We have a group on LinkedIn that is exclusively for alumni and a mailing list you can sign up for if you would like to be informed about alumni group and LRC activities. We have also organised a series of short lunch-time calls for alumni with presentations and “getting to know each other” sessions, that we hope to continue in 2024. You can find more information on the group and how to join here.
Keyboard workshop
For a while now, Tabea has been an active volunteer with Translation Commons, which is a non-profit organisation that “collaborates with Indigenous and minority communities to bridge the digital divide” in particular in regards to indigenous languages. Parts of the activities centre around the development of keyboards for languages that don’t have a suitable one, which is an important step in bringing those languages into the digital world.
In October 2023 the LRC and Translation Commons organised a 1-day keyboard development workshop at the University of Limerick for students in the department of Computer Science and Information Systems. We were delighted to welcome Tex Texin to UL for this occasion – Tex co-developed and co-taught the workshop and gave an interesting and well-received presentation to students and staff titled “Challenges and Strategies for Software Globalization”.
The aim of the workshop was to get students interested in the topic and encourage them to join in the keyboard development efforts. It also gave us the opportunity to test our newly developed workshop in a relatively small group setting and to refine it as we are hoping to organise similar workshops in the future, for groups all over the world.
Participants found the process of designing and developing a simple, latin-script based keyboard for the Dogon language rewarding and some have decided to continue learning about keyboards and working on projects together as part of a small, newly-founded working group at the University of Limerick. We are looking forward to sharing our progress on those projects in the future!
Courses and Graduating Students
Congratulations go to Helena Dillon who has successfully completed her MSc (Research) dissertation titled “Digital Marketing Technology Adoption by Retail Fashion Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Context of the Pandemic: An Analysis Based on the Diffusion of Innovations Theory” under the supervision of Dr. Katie Crowley and Dr. Tabea De Wille.
We also congratulate all our graduated students in the MSc Software Development: International Systems and wish them all the best for their future.
We were also happy to see a big uptick in enrolments for the course this year and it looks like the trend will continue for 2024.
Looking towards 2024
2024 will be the 25th anniversary of the LRC being established at the University of Limerick. We would like to mark the occasion with an event and would like your input on the format of the event. We would therefore ask you to fill in this form and provide your thoughts on whether you might attend such an event, to allow us to estimate whether it will be feasible to organise.
We would also like to organise more alumni lunch-time meetings and are looking for presenters. If you are interested in presenting on a topic in localisation, internationalisation or translation technology that interests you for about 10 to 15 minutes, please get in touch via tabea.dewille@ul.ie
Lastly, it only remains to wish you a relaxing, joyful end of the year.
Recent Comments