Imagine it’s the year 2010 and a United States tourist with an adventurous streak goes journeying through the South African countryside. Finding himself lost in the rural Free State, Sesotho is the only language he hears being spoken for miles.
Disoriented and confused, he could try to sign and signal his way out of oblivion; or he could use his cellphone to learn a foreign language and help him on his way.
According to Thabo Olivier, the creator of a new multilingual software programme for cellphones, the latter is not as complicated an option as it seems.
By using the software to choose a base language (such as English) and another language (in this case Sesotho), the perplexed tourist can scroll through the programme’s list of sentences. Choosing “I am lost”, for instance, he would find its Sesotho translation, “Ke Lahlehile”, with an accompanying voice recording.
Initially developed as a PC version a few years ago, Olivier says this is a much simpler way of getting oriented with foreign languages.
“To go for a [language] course takes so much discipline and time,” he says.
Olivier says the software means there is a convenient and effective way to bridge the barriers created by language differences.
Through the success of the PC version, which was implemented in South Africa’s Parliament and the nine provincial legislatures recently, Olivier and his company, Afrilingo, decided to expand their reach.
Taking the programme to the mobile domain was the next step because, as Olivier says: “People don’t go travelling with their PCs, but everyone always has their cellphones with them.”
Olivier says the cellphone software, loaded on to a memory card, will be very beneficial during the 2010 Soccer World Cup, as it will enable tourists and locals to communicate more easily with each other in their own languages.
The cellphone version, similar to the PC version, contains separate words and sentences in all South Africa’s 11 official languages. However, it contains only 25% of the information available on the PC version. It is a more compact version of the original, something that Olivier refers to as a “travel guide” edition.
Adhering to Ogden’s Basic English , the cellphone programme contains a list of 850 words and 51 generic sentences that can be used interchangeably. Olivier explains that although it might seem like a small amount, one generic sentence can actually be used to make up to 50 others, “like the sentence [starting] ‘I am’, which could be ‘I am hungry’, ‘I am tired’, ‘I am in need of assistance'”, he says.
Users are able to slot any of the 850 words into some of these generic sentences, and in that way, they can more or less tailor the response to suit their requirements. By pressing the “volumiser” button on the programme, users are then able to hear the correct pronunciation of the words spoken by a native of that particular language.
“Sometimes words are spelled the same in different [African] languages, but they are pronounced differently,” Olivier says. “The voice function is the most important function [of the software].”
Explaining a unique benefit of this multilingual programme, Olivier says that, unlike other language-teaching programmes, Afrilingo’s does not require the user to be literate in English.
“We think everyone speaks English, but according to the national census, only 8,2% of South Africans have English as their first language,” Olivier says. “And language defines us.”
This software works well between all 11 official languages; an isiZulu speaker wanting to say something in TshiVenda, for instance, will be able to use it just as easily as an English speaker would.
When the PC version was initially released, it targeted government and big corporates, Olivier says.
“We didn’t expect that the public would be interested.”
But there has been a great amount of public attention, particularly towards the mobile version. “In excess of 32% [of people polled] wanted [the mobile version] immediately … Even people on pay-as-you-go said they would change to a contract if they could get it,” Olivier says.
He says Afrilingo is in the process of getting a cellphone service provider to come on board as a partner in implementing the mobile version. “If this happens, ideally, people would get the service free on their contract [with that operator],” he says. If not, Afrilingo will retail the product themselves
Plans are also under way to expand the multilingual software operation. Olivier is currently working on a programme that works with Namibia’s official languages, and intends to start on others that will assist with legal, financial and medical language services.
Olivier plans to launch the mobile version of Afrilingo’s multilingual software on February 21 next year, in commemoration of International Mother Tongue Day.