Project Description and current stage of implementation
Project Description
The Challenges
The dictionary has been neglected for several decades since very few lexicographers knowledgeable of the Sotho languages speak German – with some exceptions (see our "German-English Team" members).
And there are more challenges: First, the dictionary is mostly inaccessible to potential target users and researchers because Endemann used an outdated phonetically-based alphabet (which might have been at least in parts his own invention). Secondly, because of a combination of his phonetic writing system and a left-expanded access structure it is often unclear where a word can be found on its more than 800 pages. As the publisher Walter DeGruyter, Berlin, bought the rights and still offers a re-print of its own 1912 version, the third challenge here is that not many people would have way more than 100 Euros at hand to buy a copy to do their own research on this historic documentation. Lastly, it needs to be kept in mind that the dictionary was not written by a linguist/lexicographer, but by a German missionary, and this profession might have influenced his descriptions of the Sotho languages and cultures. Even though the German missionaries were well trained in skills necessary for compiling dictionaries, their target users were other missionaries, and not researchers of the language and culture as such.
However, we are dictionary lovers and lovers of the Sotho languages, too, so for us no mountain is too high to get this dictionary – or at least parts of it – digitized and available for a wider public, also to enable a wider discussion on its content. Another reason is to preserve this knowledge and to present it as quality assured information on the Sotho languages, dialects and culture(s). See the "Project Description" page for information on how we address the challenges of digitizing this dictionary.
Methodology
We tackled the challenges consecutively:
- We obtained permission from DeGruyter to publish 1,000 nouns and 1,000 verbs freely on the internet.
- We found ways to transliterate Endemann's phonetic alphabet into a modern orthography.
- We ran OCR4all (insert reference here) using the .pdfs provided by DeGruyter to get a machine-readable version and used some scripts afterwards to correct typical OCR errors.
- We formed the "German-English" Team of speakers of German who not only collect selected data from the OCR files, but also add English translations.
- We also formed the "English-Sotho Team" of speakers of the Sotho languages and dialects as a quality assurance team to comment on Endemann's interpretation of the meanings of the Sotho words (however, this team still needs more members, see below).
- We also have a Sotho – English – Afrikaans team who is responsible for translating the English text to Afrikaans.
- Lastly, together with the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources, SADiLaR, we currently develop and will implement an electronic dictionary freely available for access and for your comments by 2026.