Multilingual transcripts from the ǂKhomani | Hugh Brody Archive (BVF41)
This data consists of hundreds of fully transcribed and translated transcript files in CSV format. Files are transcribed verbatim from Nǀuu, Nama, Kora, Griekwa and/or Afrikaans into English. All but Afrikaans are endangered languages in southern Africa. These resources are very rare as these languages range from critically endangered to endangered and very little exists in a digital format such as this. It is hoped that access to such resources will facilitate further research into the target languages and allow for the preservation thereof for posterity.
The data was originally collected between 1997 and 2012 by the following researchers: Nigel Crawhall, Tony Traill, Hugh Brody, Bill Kemp, Levi Namaseb, Roger Chennells in collaboration with key community members such as: Dawid Kruiper, Oupa Regopstaan Kruiper, Elsie Vaalbooi, Petrus Vaalbooi, ǀUna Rooi, Kheis Brou, Jakob Malgas, Andries Olyn, Anna Swartz, Antjie Kassie, Katrina Esau, Johanna Koper and Griet Seekoei.
From 2014 to date a transcription and translation team led by linguist Kerry Jones from African Tongue in collaboration with the University of Cape Town Libraries began creating the digital collection. This process required a large and specialised team from various fields to work closely with the ǂKhomani people to verify archive descriptions. In linguistics, Bonny Sands (Nǀuu), Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (Nǀuu), Kerry Jones (Nǀuu and Khoekhoegowab), Niklaas Fredericks (Khoekhoegowab), Sylvanus Job (Khoekhoegowab), Valerie Isaaks (Khoekhoegowab), Francoise Betta Steyn (Onse Afrikaans) and Anneke Potgieter (Standard Afrikaans). From 2023, consultancy Uliza LLC has assisted with converting the transcript files into machine readable format as well as into subtitles for the archived film footage. Their team consisted of Christine Vorster (Operations Manager), Lia Snijman (Project Coordinator), Craig Swingler (Project Assistant).
The process of taking such a large and diverse African collection, digitising it and describing it in a way that facilitates FAIR access required the development of unique resources and processes never before undertaken. To see the showcase of the collection with videos, photos and transcripts please visit https://ibali.uct.ac.za/s/bvf41
File Naming Convention for transcripts:
YYYY_##-## (eg 1998_05-12) - refers to: year of recording_tape #-clip #
