African Language
Research on African languages is rapidly expanding, driven by the need to develop natural language processing (NLP) tools for the continent's diverse linguistic landscape. Current efforts focus on adapting and improving existing multilingual models (like BERT and HuBERT) and creating new, smaller, more efficient models specifically for low-resource African languages, often employing techniques like self-supervised learning and data augmentation to overcome data scarcity. This work is crucial for bridging the digital divide, enabling access to technology and information in local languages, and fostering linguistic diversity within the broader NLP community.
Papers
SemEval-2023 Task 12: Sentiment Analysis for African Languages (AfriSenti-SemEval)
Shamsuddeen Hassan Muhammad, Idris Abdulmumin, Seid Muhie Yimam, David Ifeoluwa Adelani, Ibrahim Sa'id Ahmad, Nedjma Ousidhoum, Abinew Ayele, Saif M. Mohammad, Meriem Beloucif, Sebastian Ruder
Masakhane-Afrisenti at SemEval-2023 Task 12: Sentiment Analysis using Afro-centric Language Models and Adapters for Low-resource African Languages
Israel Abebe Azime, Sana Sabah Al-Azzawi, Atnafu Lambebo Tonja, Iyanuoluwa Shode, Jesujoba Alabi, Ayodele Awokoya, Mardiyyah Oduwole, Tosin Adewumi, Samuel Fanijo, Oyinkansola Awosan, Oreen Yousuf
Bootstrapping NLP tools across low-resourced African languages: an overview and prospects
C. Maria Keet
University of Cape Town's WMT22 System: Multilingual Machine Translation for Southern African Languages
Khalid N. Elmadani, Francois Meyer, Jan Buys
AfroLID: A Neural Language Identification Tool for African Languages
Ife Adebara, AbdelRahim Elmadany, Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, Alcides Alcoba Inciarte