The University Language Planning and Development Office (ULPDO) was established consequent to the approval of the University Language Board. The ULPDO’s mandate is to operationalize the university’s language policy and plan, which was first enunciated in 2006 and revised in 2014. It is derived from, and is consistent with the country’s constitution, which impels government to develop previously disadvantaged indigenous official languages. Thus the UKZN language policy and plan is responsive to the constitutional imperative to achieve parity of esteem between all eleven official languages, and to use them in all spheres of life including (higher) education. The university’s language policy and plan recognizes the importance of language in teaching and learning, and the need to intellectualize African languages as articulated in its transformation charter, which states that it recognizes the importance and value of African languages as academic languages.

Vision of the ULPDO

To be the centre of excellence in the promotion, development and the scientification of indigenous languages with specific reference to isiZulu. 

Mission of the ULPDO

To embrace and foster functional bilingualism at the University of KwaZulu-Natal through the promotion of equitable use of the English language and isiZulu as provided for in the University Language Policy (2006). To achieve this, the office has set out the following objectives: 

Objectives

• To promote the development of isiZulu to be a language of administration, teaching and learning, research and innovation while accentuating the role of English as a primary academic language.
• To promote, facilitate and oversee the adherence to the statutory provisions in the development of technical terminology in isiZulu.
• To monitor and render quality translation, editing and interpreting services to the entire university community.
• To develop an isiZulu National Corpus and isiZulu Term Bank as important reservoirs for the development of robust Human Language Technologies (HLT) and for posterity.