Bonaventure Dossou

Bonaventure Dossou, a young computer scientist from Benin, created a French to Fon translation app after struggling to communicate with his mother. He discusses the challenges of translation for low-resource languages and how he and fellow innovators aim to establish an 'African Babel Fish' for seamless communication across the continent. The conversation highlights the importance of preserving cultural identity through language and improving digital accessibility in education and healthcare, showcasing a groundbreaking vision for the future.

Jade Abbott and Bonaventure Dossou of Masakhane discuss their mission to strengthen language technology for African languages. They talk about the challenges of data availability, the importance of language and culture, and the need for collaborative research and co-authorship. They also touch on Unicode support, phone translators, and improving translation quality.