Building NLP infrastructure where none existed — 15 African dialects
No tools. No models. No translators. We recruited community linguists across 15 African dialects and built glossaries, morphological rules, and annotation standards from nothing.
Client Context & Operational Challenge
An enterprise client required linguistic infrastructure prioritizing zero-resource African dialects where no commercial NLP tools, pre-trained models, or standardized terminology existed. The engagement required building foundational linguistic assets from scratch.
Execution & Governance Model
Partnered with academic and community-based linguistic experts. Built glossaries, morphological rule sets, and annotation calibration guidelines for each language. Deployed iterative validation cycles to refine linguistic asset accuracy.
Scale & Velocity Constraints
- 15+ zero-resource dialects with no existing NLP coverage
- Script systems requiring custom encoding workflows
- Community-based linguistic SME recruitment
- Terminology creation — not just translation
What Was Delivered
Asset Outputs & Deliverables
- Created production-ready linguistic infrastructure for languages that previously had no commercial coverage. Assets now serve multiple downstream projects including AI training, translation, and content localization.
Operational Footprint
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