AFRICAN LANGUAGES DEVELOPMENT UNIT HARD AT WORK TO BUILD A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT AT VUT
By: Qhawekazi Memani – 24 April 2023
The VUT ALDU Unit Team at CUT
The Vaal University of Technology (VUT) – African Languages Development Unit (ALDU) within the Centre for Academic Development (CAD) visited the Central University of Technology (CUT) on a benchmarking mission and to explore possible collaboration opportunities. Again, on 18 – 21 April 2023, they also embarked on a week-long Working Committee Meeting which was held in Parys.
ALDU and CUT Language Services Units met mainly to share their experiences, challenges, and opportunities around the implementation of multilingual language policy and the development of the historically marginalised languages. The two University Units also discussed possibilities of forging collaborations on multilingual projects mainly to avoid concentrating on what is already being developed by either of the institution and also avoiding to operate in silos since the development of African languages requires a lot of efforts. VUT was represented by Mr Jacob Thamaga, Acting Manager – African Languages Development Unit, Ms Tebogo Mathebula, Neo Sehlahla, and Ishmael Molatou, who are-Language Practitioners.
At the Working Committee Meeting experts from various institutions were invited to authenticate the developed multilingual glossaries and this time the committee focused on Business Ethics glossaries.
According to Jacob Thamaga, this project plays a critical role in terms of developing and promoting the historically marginalised languages, since languages are still behind in terms existing terminologies to be utilised in education, business, technology and sciences. “Therefore, we saw a need to launch this project mainly to intellectualise Sesotho and Sepedi for use as mediums of instruction in higher education in a long run,” he said.
The Unit is also striving to build a multilingual environment in VUT with the aim to enhance teaching and learning activities and to promote access and success through the use of African languages.