Potchefstroom Campus assists Google with Afrikaans technology

Potchefstroom - The Centre for Text Technology (CTexT®) recently collaborated with Google™ in convening focus groups at the North-West University’s Potchefstroom Campus for the evaluation of the first version of YouTube in Afrikaans.

Participants in the focus group met to trace errors and solve language problems on the Afrikaans YouTube page.

“At Google we are proud of the fact that our products are becoming available in more and more languages. Google Search has been available in Afrikaans for some time, but now we are serious about making other Google products available in Afrikaans as well. The first product is almost ready. YouTube is one of the most popular webpage’s in South Africa (and the world) and the Afrikaans YouTube will be ready to use within a few weeks”, said Ian Parsons, Afrikaans Language Specialist at Google SA.

Among those present were members of CTexT, staff and students from the School of Communication Studies, and students from Translation Studies and Language Technology.

Attendees came up with good ideas for YouTube-specific terms for which no Afrikaans words had thus far existed. They also helped point out errors and trace broken links. Parsons reported that the group of 16 people had made 515 suggestions in the four hours: close to 100 changes were made to the YouTube website based on feedback from this session. “It was a great group to work with. The students are clearly passionate about Afrikaans, and this helped us complete a large chunk of work,” said Parsons.