Suléne Pilon & Danie Prinsloo E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Overview: Teaching and Training in South Africa 25 November 2008;

Suléne Pilon & Danie Prinsloo

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Overview: Teaching and Training in South Africa

25 November 2008; Cape Town

Gerhard B van Huyssteen

Introduction: Overview


• Under-graduate• NWU• UFS

• Post-graduate• UFS• UP• UNISA• Limpopo• NWU

Pilon & Prinsloo


Under-graduate Teaching: NWU


• BA Language Technology• Only programme of its kind in SA• Equips students to:

• Fill positions in emergent SA HLT industry• Continue with post-graduate studies

• Project-based

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• Basic core of modules• Langauges• Computer Programming• Mathematics

• General formative modules

• Languages• First language: Afrikaans, English, Setswana• Foreign language: Setswana, isiZulu,

German, French Pilon & Prinsloo




• Language Technology: Introduction• Language Technology: Linguistics for Language

Technology Students• Introduction to NLP• Language Technology: Speech Applications• Language Technology: Text Applications• Language technology: Internship• Advanced NLP

• Language Technology Project Pilon & Prinsloo




• Electronic Engineering students• Project in final year

• CTexT• Etienne Barnard

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Under-graduate Teaching: UFS


• Two courses as part of “Language Practitioners” programme• Introduction to Speech and Language

Technology• Technology in Translation

• Has an entire HLT course “on the books”• Currently dormant• Could be activated if need arises

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Under-graduate Teaching: Other


• University of Pretoria• Some lectures as part of an AI course

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Post-graduate Teaching: Introduction


• University websites quite uninformative

• Obtained information from individuals

• No such modules at Wits

• No such modules at UJ

• Not enough student interest

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Post-graduate Teaching: UFS


• “Language Practitioners” Honours programme

• Six fields of specialisation• One of them: Language Technology

• Focus on • Computer Assisted Translation• Application• Localization

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Post-graduate Teaching: UP


• LEX 852 HLT in Lexicography and NLP• Introduction to core aspects of HLT in

lexicography • Introduction to NLP• Focusing on the compilation and manipulation

of corpora • Building and validation of spellcheckers • Use, compilation and monitoring of usage of

paper, electronic and internet dictionaries

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• TRL 711 HLT in Translation Practice• Focus on the use and application of HLT in translation

practice• Localization, internationalization and globalization. • Translation and language technology• Introduction to the use of Computer-Assisted

Translation (CAT) tools – translation memory (TM) • Terminology management• Machine translation (MT)

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• TRL 711 HLT in Translation Practice II• Use of electronic text corpora as translation resource.• Translator's aid and translators' tools• Mining for translation equivalents• Obtaining translation equivalents for terms that do not

exist in the target language by utilizing electronic resources

• Using the Internet as 'consulting expert', etc.

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Post-graduate Teaching: UNISA


• COS461J : Natural Language Processing• Introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of NLP

• Focus on fundamental algorithms, whether logical or statistical, on practical applications, and on scientific evaluation related to the processing of words and syntax

• Focus on the processing of natural language, not on speech

• Assumed background: Only for students who majored in computer science and have a solid working knowledge of automata and formal language theory

• A background in formal logic, in particular first order logic, will also be of value

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Post-graduate Teaching: UNISA


• COS461J : Natural Language Processing II• Abbreviated syllabus: • Regarding words: regular expressions and automata;

morphology and finite-state transducers; n-grams; part-of-speech tagging

• Regarding syntax: formal grammars; parsing• Regarding semantics: representation of meaning;

lexical and computational lexical semantics. • Regarding applications: question answering;

summarisation

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Post-graduate Teaching: Limpopo


• COSC 702 Speech Technology

• Introduction to Speech Technology• ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)

• TTS (Text to Speech)

• Dialogue systems Masters Continuation

• Part of Speech Technology Workshop

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Post-graduate Teaching: NWU


• Taal, Teks en Tegnologie (Language, Text and Technology)

• Part of Afrikaans & Dutch Honnours programme - aimed at Linguistic students

• Three modules from BA Language Technology• Introduction to NLP• Speech Applications• Text Applications

Pilon & Prinsloo

Gerhard B van Huyssteen25 November 2008; Cape Town

• Thank you

• Dankie

• Re a leboga

• Siyabonga

Pilon & Prinsloo

Documents

Suléne Pilon & Danie Prinsloo E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Overview: Teaching and Training in South Africa 25 November 2008;