[LI] African languages & mobile phones

Two items on mobiles in Africa, one of which deals explicitly with language interfaces, the other of which evidently doesn’t broach the question. Posted on LinkedIn in summer 2017.

MTN Zambia executive details language challenges,” MobileWorldLive.com, 12 July 2017 (posted July 2017)

Interesting account of MTN Zambia’s offering of services in 7 Zambian languages (in addition to English). According to Mwenzi Mulenga, it has been “a huge success, but it has come with a huge cost.” Hoping this experience is being well documented, not only on the business and socioeconomic sides, but also in terms of developing language resources & terminologies.

Why the Future of African Banking is Voice-Assisted Mobile Banking,” Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Tekedia.com, 8 August 2017 (posted August 2017)

Otherwise interesting item on voice assisted mobile banking in Africa amazingly doesn’t mention languages & L10n.

(my comment)

That piece on Tekedia.com referenced a paywalled The Wall Street Journal article https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-typing-the-internets-next-billion-users-will-use-video-and-voice-1502116070 – can anyone with WSJ access tell us if the latter mentions languages or #L10n ?


Other blogs > LinkedIn > LinkedIn articles & posts, 2017 (Jul–Dec)

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