[Afridig] CfP Third workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Language (RAIL)

[Menno Van Zaanen]

First call for papers

Third workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Language (RAIL)
https://bit.ly/rail2022  


The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) is
organising the 3rd RAIL workshop in the field of Resources for African
Indigenous Languages. This workshop aims to bring together researchers
who are interested in showcasing their research and thereby boosting
the field of African indigenous languages. This provides an overview of
the current state-of-the-art and emphasizes availability of African
indigenous language resources, including both data and tools.
Additionally, it will allow for information sharing among researchers
interested in African indigenous languages and also start discussions
on improving the quality and availability of the resources.  Many
African indigenous languages currently have no or very limited
resources available and, additionally, they are often structurally
quite different from more well-resourced languages, requiring the
development and use of specialized techniques.  By bringing together
researchers from different fields (e.g., (computational) linguistics,
sociolinguistics, language technology) to discuss the development of
language resources for African indigenous languages, we hope to boost
research in this field.

The RAIL workshop is an interdisciplinary platform for researchers
working on resources (data collections, tools, etc.) specifically
targeted towards African indigenous languages.  It aims to create the
conditions for the emergence of a scientific community of practice that
focuses on data, as well as tools, specifically designed for or applied
to indigenous languages found in Africa. 

Suggested topics include the following:
* Digital representations of linguistic structures
* Descriptions of corpora or other data sets of African indigenous
languages
* Building resources for (under resourced) African indigenous languages
* Developing and using African indigenous languages in the digital age
* Effectiveness of digital technologies for the development of African
indigenous languages
* Revealing unknown or unpublished existing resources for African
indigenous languages
* Developing desired resources for African indigenous languages
* Improving quality, availability and accessibility of African
indigenous language resources


The 3rd RAIL workshop 2022 will be co-located with the 10th Southern
African Microlinguistics Workshop (
https://sites.google.com/nwulettere.co.za/samwop-10/home). This will be
an in-person event located in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Registration
will be free.

RAIL 2022 submission requirements:
* RAIL asks for full papers from 4 pages to 8 pages (plus more pages
for references if needed), which must strictly follow the Journal of
the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa style guide (
https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/30
).
* Accepted submissions will be published in JDHASA, the Journal of the
Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (
https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa/).
* Papers will be double blind peer-reviewed and must be submitted
through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=rail2022).

Important dates
Submission deadline: 28 August 2022
Date of notification: 30 September 2022
Camera ready copy deadline: 23 October 2022
RAIL: 30 November 2022, North-West University - Potchefstroom
SAMWOP: 1 – 3 December 2021, North-West University - Potchefstroom


Organising Committee
Jessica Mabaso
Rooweither Mabuya
Muzi Matfunjwa
Mmasibidi Setaka
Menno van Zaanen

South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South
Africa

-- 
Prof Menno van Zaanen     menno.vanzaanen at nwu.ac.za
Professor in Digital Humanities
South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
https://www.sadilar.org