CALL TO ACTION

To all linguists, scientists, educators, and advocates of indigenous knowledge—this is a pivotal call to action. We are forging a path to preserve, expand, and refine ethnic languages (Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa transforming them into a vessel capable of conveying the full complexity and precision of modern science. This initiative is a chance to harness the beauty and power embedded within our language, allowing it to thrive in the realms of scientific inquiry, technology, and innovation. This is a mission for anyone committed to the advancement and sustainability of indigenous languages and who believes in the value of knowledge preservation and growth for future generations.

Why This Matters

In Igbo and many indigenous languages, the natural structure of sound and phonemes holds an encoded wisdom—a distinct, atomistic quality—that speaks to the language’s unique worldview and approach to understanding reality. Ignoring this profound connection is a detriment to our intellectual heritage. We have a responsibility to not only preserve these linguistic nuances but to equip our language with the tools necessary to communicate modern scientific concepts effectively.

The Goal: A Comprehensive Dictionary

We are building a lexicon of one million words, complete with phonetic and morphological annotations, where even the most advanced scientific terms can find meaningful representation. This will not merely be a translation project; it’s a transformative effort to reimagine Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa within the context of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STREAM). We will create entirely new terms where needed, guided by strict criteria to ensure clarity, relevance, and fidelity to both scientific meaning and linguistic heritage.- All these will be a part of our foundational model.

How You Can Join

This endeavor is as intricate as it is essential, and it requires the collaborative effort of trained professionals and passionate language speakers. We are forming specialized teams to tackle different aspects of this project, each of which will play a crucial role in shaping the final body of work. Here’s how we’re organizing our team and how you can contribute:

1. Language Contributors – Create foundational terms and suggest linguistic roots for new scientific concepts.
2. Structure Builders – Develop the syntactic and grammatical frameworks for these new terms to ensure they integrate seamlessly into Igbo.
3. Quality Checkers – Rigorously review for accuracy, context, and appropriateness, ensuring terms meet our high standards.
4. Ratifying Committee – A separate, expert group fluent in Igbo and English, responsible for finalizing terms and resolving any conflicts in meaning or usage.
5. Technical skills

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) Expertise For AI engineers focused on NLP, understanding low-resource languages, data preprocessing, and developing linguistic models are crucial. This includes experience with transformers and transfer learning to adapt models to languages with limited data.
• Computational Linguistics Experts in computational linguistics bring the ability to analyze language structures, phonetics, and morphology. They are essential for creating robust language models that respect each language's unique syntactic and phonetic characteristics.
• Machine Learning and Data Science AI engineers with machine learning and data science skills are needed to design, train, and validate models that predict and interpret new language terms. They are also key in handling data preprocessing and model fine-tuning for high accuracy.
• DevOps and MLOps Engineering DevOps and MLOps engineers are critical for deploying and maintaining NLP models in production environments. They streamline the pipeline, automating the processes for model training, deployment, and monitoring, ensuring the project is scalable and maintainable.
• Linguistic Data Collection and Annotation Data collection teams must curate large, high-quality linguistic datasets. Annotation specialists can add phonetic, morphological, and semantic annotations, especially for low-resource languages, which require expert attention to preserve language authenticity.
• Cloud Infrastructure and Distributed Computing DevOps and AI engineers proficient in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and distributed computing can set up scalable resources for model training, storage, and collaborative workspaces, ensuring efficient processing and data management.
• Cultural Anthropology and Ethnolinguistics Cultural anthropologists or ethnolinguists contribute vital insights into each language’s cultural context. This expertise ensures that new scientific terms align with the speakers' worldview and linguistic heritage, fostering community acceptance and relevance.
• Taxonomy and Ontology Development Taxonomists or linguists with skills in classification and ontology development are needed to systematically organize new scientific terms. This will create a structured lexicon that aligns with scientific standards and allows for easy referencing.
• Data Visualization and UI/UX Design Specialists in data visualization and UI/UX design can create user-friendly interfaces for exploring and updating the evolving dictionary. Their skills are key to ensuring that both linguists and non-specialists can access and utilize the dictionary easily.
• Quality Assurance (QA) and Ethics in AI QA experts and AI ethicists are needed to ensure the project meets high accuracy and ethical standards. They handle quality checks, validate linguistic fidelity, and ensure compliance with AI ethical guidelines, especially in the use of indigenous data and cultural knowledge.

Click on the button get involved: AFAAI Open Source project: Low Resource Language Model

Our Standards and Framework

We are committed to developing terms that are accurate, meaningful, and grounded in rigorous scientific understanding. To this end, our framework includes:

• Reliance on Verified Research: Only well-supported scientific facts will serve as the basis for new terms.
• Cultural and Linguistic Integrity: Roots and terms will be carefully chosen to reflect indigenous perspectives, using only descriptive roots that revive the term’s essence.
• Structured Review Process: Terms will undergo multiple levels of scrutiny, with the ratifying committee making final determinations in cases of conflict.

The process will culminate in a comprehensive document that lays the foundation for a good number of ethnic languages covering scientific language—a resource that educators, scientists, and the general public can reference for generations to come.

Reimagining Science in Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba

So, what is "science" in Igbo? This question propels us to explore, to redefine, and to celebrate the power of our language. Science in Igbo will not be just a word but a conceptual bridge, an indigenous framework that captures the vastness of knowledge and the intricacies of inquiry.

We invite all linguists, scientists, and dedicated thinkers to join us in building a future where our language holds its rightful place in the world of knowledge. Let’s make Igbo a powerful language of science, inspiring generations to come.