South African Police Services language practitioner Shumani Nevhulaudzi is a woman of many words. In fact, she can speak all 11 official South African languages.

Even though Nevhulaudzi is computer literate, word-processing can be a frustrating experience. This is because Venda, her first language, uses diacritic characters that are not easily accessible using standard keyboard mappings and fonts.

“When the language is not spelt correctly because of insufficient characters, it becomes an insult to the language itself,” says Nevhulaudzi.

Nevhulaudzi volunteered to work on the “keyboard translation” of Venda, part of an initiative currently run by NGO translate.org.za to produce a multilingual keyboard mapping that supports all South African languages.

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=652