On 11 July 2024, Kabod Language Services hosted a webinar titled “How Can We Better Leverage Machine Translation (MT) Strategically in Africa?” The event brought together academic experts, NLP researchers, translators, and industry leaders to discuss the balance between technological advancement and cultural sensitivity in MT. Experts discussed key issues such as:
Key Challenges
- Algorithmic Challenges:
- Highlighting translation errors as indicators of deeper issues in MT technology.
- Community Involvement: Stressing the role of local communities in MT development.
- Contextual Considerations: Highlighting the need to consider linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic factors.
- Dataset Quality: Noting that MT efficiency depends heavily on high-quality data.
