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Second Call for Papers
Seventh Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL)
Co-located with LREC 2026
RAIL Workshop date: 12 May 2026
RAIL website:
https://sadilar.org/en/seventh-workshop-on-resources-for-african-indigenous…
Submission link for the RAIL workshop:
https://softconf.com/lrec2026/RAIL2026/
LREC Conference dates: 11-16 May 2026
LREC website: https://www.elra.info/lrec2026/
Venue: Palau de Congressos de Palma, Palma de Mallorca (Spain)
The Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) workshop provides
an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on resources such
as data collections and annotations, Human Language Technologies (HLT)
and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools, and their applications,
specifically targeted towards African indigenous languages. In
particular, it aims to create the conditions for the emergence of a
scientific community of practice that focuses on data, as well as
computational linguistic tools specifically designed for or applied to
indigenous languages found in Africa. The seventh Resources for African
Indigenous Languages (RAIL) workshop will be co-located with the
Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC) 2026 in Palau de
Congressos de Palma, Palma, Mallorca (Spain).
Many African languages are under-resourced while only a few are
considered to be somewhat better resourced. These languages often share
interesting properties such as writing systems, making them different
from most high-resourced languages. From a computational perspective,
these languages lack enough corpora to undertake high level development
of NLP and HLT tools, which in turn impedes the development of African
languages in these areas. During previous workshops, it was noted that
the problems and solutions presented were not only applicable to
African languages but were also relevant to many other low-resource
languages across the world. Because these languages share similar
challenges, this workshop provides researchers with opportunities to
work collaboratively on issues of language resource development and
learn from each other.
The RAIL workshop has several aims. First, the workshop brings together
researchers who work on African indigenous languages, forming a
community of practice for people working on indigenous languages.
Second, the workshop aims to reveal currently unknown or unpublished
existing resources (corpora, NLP tools, and applications), resulting in
a better overview of the current state-of-the-art, and also allows for
discussions on novel, desired resources for future research in this
area. Third, it enhances sharing of knowledge on the development of
low-resource languages. Finally, it enables discussions on how to
improve the quality as well as availability of the resources.
The workshop theme is “Creating resources for less-resourced African
languages”, but submissions on any topic related to properties of
African indigenous languages (including related non-African languages)
may be accepted. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) 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
* Applications that make use of data collections of African indigenous
languages
Submission requirements:
We invite papers on original, unpublished work related to the topics of
the workshop. Submissions, presenting completed work, should adhere to
the LREC conference requirements. These requirements are described in
LREC’s authors kit: https://lrec2026.info/authors-kit/. The submission
should be double blind and each submission should be between four and
eight pages. Only oral papers should be submitted. The maximum number
of pages excludes a compulsory ethics statement, discussion on
limitations, and references and optional acknowledgements, as well as
data and code availability statements if applicable. Appendices or
supplementary material are allowed, but this information will not
necessarily be taken into account during the review process.
The submission link for the RAIL workshop:
https://softconf.com/lrec2026/RAIL2026/
Authors are encouraged to upload their datasets to the SADiLaR
repository: https://repo.sadilar.org/. In case of difficulties
uploading the datasets, please reach out to Benito Trollip
(benito.trollip(a)nwu.ac.za).
Important dates:
Submission deadline: 23 February 2026 AoE
Date of notification: 11 March 2026 AoE
Camera ready copy deadline: 30 March 2026 AoE
Workshop: 12 May 2026
Organising Committee:
Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
--
Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za
Professor in Digital Humanities
South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
https://www.sadilar.org
________________________________
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Dear colleagues,
The Global Digital Humanities Symposium planning committee is delighted to remind everyone that the program<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule/> is available and free registration<https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/register/event/74923> is open for the 11th annual Symposium. This year’s event will take place in-person on Monday, 13 April at Michigan State University (USA), virtually on Zoom and YouTube on Tuesday and Wednesday, 14-15 April, and in-person on Friday, 17 April at Universidad de Monterrey (Mexico). All days will be livestreamed.
The registration deadline is Friday, 27 March 2026.
During the Virtual Symposium, we will support live interpretation of presentations from English into Spanish and from Spanish into English.
We are delighted to feature virtual keynote presentations from Evelin Heidel from Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Cindy A. Nguyen from UCLA, and in-person keynote presentations from Rayvon Fouché from Northwestern University on 13 April and Hugo Solís García from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana on 17 April.
The daily schedule of the Symposium is listed below, and you can explore the full program<http://msuglobaldh.org/schedule/>, including presentation abstracts.
Virtual Symposium
Tuesday, 14 April<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#tuesday>
12:00-6:15pm EDT / 5:00-11:15pm Nigeria / 6:00pm-12:15am April 15 CEST / 12:00-6:15am April 15 Beijing
Wednesday, 15 April<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#tuesday>
9:00am-5:00pm EDT / 2:00-10:00 pm Nigeria / 3:00-11:00pm CEST / 9:00pm-5:00am 16 April Beijing
In-Person Symposium
Monday, 13 April<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#monday> (East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
8:30am-7:30pm EDT / 1:30pm-12:30am A 14pril Nigeria / 2:30pm-1:30am 14 April CEST / 8:30pm-7:30am 14 April Beijing
Friday, 17 April<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#friday> (Monterrey, México,)
8:00am-5:30pm CST / 10:00am-7:30pm EDT / 3:00pm-12:30am 18 April Nigeria / 4:00pm-1:30am 18 April CEST / 10:00pm-7:30am 18 April Beijing
We hope you will be able to join us!
Sincerely,
Kristen Mapes, on behalf of the Global DH Symposium Planning Committee
———
Estimados/as colegas:
El comité de planificación del Simposio Global de Humanidades Digitales se complace en recordarles que el programa<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule/> ya está disponible y que la inscripción<https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/register/event/74923> gratuita para el 11º Simposio anual está abierta. El evento de este año se llevará a cabo de forma presencial el lunes 13 de abril en la Universidad Estatal de Michigan (EE.UU.), de forma virtual a través de Zoom y YouTube el martes 14 y el miércoles 15 de abril, y de forma presencial el viernes 17 de abril en la Universidad de Monterrey (México). Todas las sesiones se transmitirán en directo.
La fecha límite para inscribirse es el viernes 27 de marzo de 2026.
Durante el simposio virtual ofrecemos servicio de interpretación de las presentaciones del inglés al español y del español al inglés.
Nos complace contar con las ponencias magistrales a cargo de Evelin Heidel de Wikimedistas de Uruguay y Cindy A. Nguyen de UCLA, en formato virtual, así como con las ponencias magistrales de Rayvon Fouché de la Universidad Northwestern el 13 de abril y Hugo Solís García de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana el 17 de abril, en formato presencial.
A continuación encontrará el programa diario del Simposio, y puede consultar el programa completo<http://msuglobaldh.org/schedule/>, incluidos los resúmenes de las ponencias, en nuestra página web.
Simposio virtual
Martes 14 de abril<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#tuesday>
12:00-6:15pm EDT / 5:00-11:15pm Nigeria / 6:00pm-12:15am del 15 de abril en CEST / 12:00-6:15am del 15 de abril en Beijing
Miércoles 15 de abril<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#tuesday>
9:00am-5:00pm EDT / 2:00-10:00 pm Nigeria / 3:00-11:00pm CEST / 9:00pm-5:00am del 16 de abril en Beijing
Simposio en persona
Lunes 13 de abril<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#monday> (East Lansing, Michigan, EE.UU.)
8:30am-7:30pm EDT / 1:30pm-12:30am A 14pril Nigeria / 2:30pm-1:30am del 14 de abril en CEST / 8:30pm-7:30am del 14 de abril en Beijing
Viernes 17 de abril<https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule-detailed/#friday> (Monterrey, México,)
8:00am-5:30pm CST / 10:00am-7:30pm EDT / 3:00pm-12:30am del 18 de abril Nigeria / 4:00pm-1:30am del 18 de abril en CEST / 10:00pm-7:30am del 18 de abril en Beijing
¡Esperamos que puedan unirse a nosotros!
En gratitud,
Kristen Mapes, El Comité de Planificación del Simposio Global de Humanidades Digitales
Kristen Mapes
Global Digital Humanities Symposium, Co-Chair
Interim Director of Digital Humanities, College of Arts & Letters
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
kmapes(a)msu.edu<mailto:kmapes@msu.edu>
she/her
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This is a reminder as people may have missed this invitation at the end
of last year:
On 21 January 10:00 SAST, Roald Eiselen will present:
Ugh, your tagger is useless! A case study of domain transfer for part
of speech taggers in two South African languages
You can register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1977583167489?aff=oddtdtcreator
If you did not know, all DH colloquia have been recorded and are made
available on SADiLaR's DH colloquium webpage that can be found here:
https://sadilar.org/en/dh-colloquium/
Please also share with your colleagues!
--
Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za
Professor in Digital Humanities
South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
https://www.sadilar.org
________________________________
NWU PRIVACY STATEMENT:
http://www.nwu.ac.za/it/gov-man/disclaimer.html
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and attachments thereto are intended solely for the recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you have received the e-mail by mistake, please contact the sender or reply e-mail and delete the e-mail and its attachments (where appropriate) from your system.
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