It has been a week since Google Search has been launched in Setswana at www.google.co.bw and www.google.co.za.
Many local Google users have been confronted, some shocked, by seeing Google in Setswana.
Google Search is well known to many as Google, although it is one of the multiple pieces of software offered by the company known as Google.
To many Google Search is Google. The project to translate the Google search interface took many months of hard labour and multiple challenges. It was led by me, Mr. Pontsho Pusoesele and Ms Gao Mosweu.
In the project were also a number of undergraduate final students. The labour of our hands and brains is finally out for public scrutiny. I am particularly thankful to Mr.
Pusoesele’s excellent contribution to clarifying many complicated IT concepts. Members of the public are here therefore granted Google Search in Setswana for their use and inspection. It is an imperfect entity, therefore suggestions of how it could be improved are welcome at [email protected].
The software will be updated every fortnight as we received feedback from the public until we are satisfied that the software has reached a stable status.
The repeated question that I have received in the past few days however has been this: why Google in Setswana? Is Google in Setswana not a waste of time?
The questions have exposed a lack of understanding of the unique position and functional relevance of the local and regional languages and why they need to be developed, promoted and supported.
It has shown that many Batswana don’t understand the significance of their mother tongue, Setswana, and that they still largely consider the language dispensable.
They wonder why some of us are concerned about developing Setswana when English can do a better job in many of the functional domains. After all English has greater economic and educational benefits compared to it.
I understand these arguments better than most ÔÇô after all I am a first class single major English graduate of UB.
I have also taught English at university for years now, having attended Oxford University and having been trained by the lexical genius, Adam Kilgarriff.
All this education on English language, comparative linguistics, corpus linguistics and lexicography has not left me addicted to the English language. Yes, it has made me appreciate the long and impressive tradition of English philology and lexicography.
But I must admit that exposure to English education has pushed me towards a different direction.
It has led me to ask the searching question: how can education help one respond to the unique needs of his environment? In my view education doesn’t exist for itself only, especially in the Botswana situation where experts are a rare breed.
Scholarship exists for a specific reason, which is to address the unique needs of our developing country. Intellectually, my position opens itself to multiple challenges. However it is a critical position to hold if one is to find a framework which addresses the unique local challenges. But I must return to the Google question.
The translation of Google Search into Setswana is precisely significant since Google is the most famous search engine. And to have the most widely used search engine in a local language, grants such a language much prestige and by extension, its speakers.
It communicates something different to the youth who are technologically competent but are culturally handicapped. It informs them that their language is as good as any other and that they are not inferior on account of their language.
It accords them much dignity since their language can be used in the technological domain, a domain which for many years was restricted to a few large languages of the world such as English, French and Spanish.
So the question: Why Google? must be answered this way: It is part of the larger picture of restoring dignity and value to the Setswana language.
It is a small part in the preservation and development of the language. It is a demonstration of how collectively in our different ways we could contribute to the development of our language and culture.
Guys at the Daily News, Naledi, Kutlwano and Mokgosi have played their part by writing news in Setswana against all odds.
The truth of the matter is that many Setswana speakers beyond form five are hopeless at reading their language.
Not that they don’t know the language ÔÇô but that because of supreme neglect of reading any material in the language, they became estranged to the language of their birth.
To have Google in Setswana therefore in a small measure increases the language’s visibility. More than South Africa, Botswana needs Google Search since in the past decade we have largely followed developments in South Africa, and we haven’t led.
South Africa has established multiple language units, while here in Botswana we have been paralysed by indecision and fear. We have failed to establish a language policy which clearly stipulates where Setswana, English and minority languages should be used and thereby guaranteeing minority languages’ death, Setswana’s stagnation and English’s dominance. It is the worst kind of self-hatred ÔÇô for a people to ignore their language and culture and leave them to the vultures.
The African Union’s ACALAN last year established a Setswana commission tasked to develop strategies of promoting and developing Setswana as a language of cross-border communication.
The union’s attempts are commendable and Google Search is but only one of the few contributions that supports the important task of the commission and the union.
