Maneno Engine

Maneno is about digitization of Kiswahili and possibly other African languages. ManenoEngine is a translation tool but the data used for translation can be repurposed and used to create other language tools. Therefore, expect some new Kiswahili language tools in the near future. The key work is on improving the database [size and structure]. The mobile app is almost trivial for now. However, the next level of translation would be to translate phrases, then sentences then complete documents. The "artificial intelligence" way is what some have used but how does the human mind do translation? That's the approach I would prefer - some kind of mental mimicry. Kiswahili is very logically structure so it should be possible to create algorithms that can transpose english grammar to Kiswahili format then translate the words and their tenses and verb forms.  For the immediate future, the key work is implementing the expanded wordlist and cleaning up some of the broken stuff in the

After four years of inactivity, Maneno Engine is back. Watch this space in the next two months. All libraries have been upgraded to AndroidX. Graphics have been converted to WebM. Eventually, the simple word list database will be elaborated to indicate word popularity and dialect. Later, Kiswahili word  etymology will  be added and a pronunciation guide.

You may have landed here after using the Maneno Engine Android App (beta). On this page you will find the following sections: Suggest translation About Maneno Engine Write to Us Share Maneno Engine Register Maneno Engine Learn More (about Maneno Engine) Suggestions - Write to Us You can write to suggest better translations, corrections or brand new word translations. Write to manenoengine at gmail.com Learn More About Maneno Engine Read about Maneno Engine on other posts on this blog. Share Maneno Engine You can share ManenoEngine on social media by clicking on the share buttons at the bottom of this blog post. To download a version of MenenoEngine for testing, browse this link and download the APK onto your device directly or copy from your PC to your Android device.  Registration As the current time, there is no formal registration. However, we shall kindly request your  feedback based on your experience with the app if you download and use it. You can pro

Its been four years since this project was conceived. We are approaching the home stretch for the mobile app. See some of the potential user interface designs: Watch this space for upcoming announcements

The Maneno Engine project is by no means dead. The first Kiswahili initiative was in 1998 when I and Prof. Chimera defined the specs for the Swahili locale in Windows 2000. In 2004, together with Dwayne Bailey of translate.org.za , we created an opensource Kiswahili spell checker that works in Open Office though at that time, OO did not have a language ID for Kiswahili.  In 2012, a Java-based English-Kiswahili application was created based on the Yale Kamusi wordlist of translated English words. The app can be downloaded from Sourceforge .  In 2014 some work started on an Android app that does English-Kiswahili single-word translation. The fully functional free prototype is close to being released together with a Pro version. The difference will be in the word lists. The free version is based in the Yale Kamusi word list while the Pro version is based on an expanded word list harvested manually from high quality Kiswahili translations of English documents with the NIV Bible as th

This year, the mobile (Android) version of the Maneno Engine is finally going to be published. The tool has ability to translate English words into Kiswahili and vice versa on an Android device starting from Android 2.2 (Foyo) to 6.0. This covers almost 100% of Android devices out there.