By Martin Benjamin | Executive Director
The highlight of this quarter has been the v1.0 completion of our bot on Facebook. This makes Kamusi the "smallest biggest dictionary" - smallest because students can access it with the least possible effort at the least possible cost, and biggest because we've now got the most precise links in a matrix of 43 languages and counting.
To use the new service, just go to Facebook Messenger and send a message to kamusiproject, as you would send any other chat. A message such as go/spanish/zulu/coche will set your languages and search for your word, whereas simply sending a message such as "coche" will look for that word using your previous settings. No bookstore, no library, no website, not even an app - you just type your word in Facebook, and presto, full info! We have students in Kamusi Labs who are working on porting the bot to several other platforms over the coming months.
In the last quarterly report, I promised we'd have 18 languages from India online "very soon". Promise fulfilled! Before we make a big deal about this, though, we are working to complete a unique universal transliteration system among alphabets, because it isn't much use to know that "coche" is in Malayalam if you can't sound out the letters of that script. Indian languages are written in many different scripts, so transliteration is really a key to making a socially useful dictionary for the sub-continent. As is common with Kamusi Labs projects, the reason a universal transliteration system hasn't been tackled before is that its relentlessly complexity is too insane to even contemplate. Look for our first implementation very soon.
Another exciting recent development has been the spontaneous emergence of a vibrant group of young users for the Fon language of Benin. Unfortunately, the group is using the WhatsApp messaging platform, which does not support bots, so we have to transfer their enthusiasm to Facebook when we've added data collection features to the current bot. This could happen soon, or could drag out for a while, This group will be a model for many other languages. Right now we are focused on expanding in the West Africa region, and then hopefully we can bring the model back to Burundi and the Swahili zone.
I'll look forward to seeing which of the fun things coming down the pike I can tell you about next time. Meanwhile, I'll share this piece of fan mail, which I think gives some insight about our persistent difficulties in attracting funding:
Subject: Regarding Kamusi
I have seen your project Kamusi Gold. I am just wondering about this.
It's mentioned that there are 7000 languages spoken and your vision is to bring most of the content online.
I personally feel like most of the languages should die fast because lots of things can be made easier. The languages issues like working from different cultures, trade related issues etc., will be gone.
Thanks and regards, MS
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