Machine Translation Systems as Enablers of Multilingualism and Access to Information in South Africa

Access to all kinds of information in all official South African languages (SALs) is a challenge even though the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) declares that all languages are equal. Information in South Africa is mainly available in English. This is detrimental to people who are not proficient in this dominant language as they cannot access crucial information in their home languages. Practical measures and interventions are essential to promote access to information in all South African languages. This is essential in the quest to promote multilingualism. This chapter discusses Machine Translation Tools that support SALs and how they can facilitate access to information and enhance multilingualism. Three Translation tools, namely Google Translate, isiZulu.net, and Siswati to English Translation Model, are employed to demonstrate how these tools can be utilised to promote access to information in SALs.