Overview

The Council of the University of KwaZulu-Natal approved the University Language Policy on 1 September 2006. This milestone was followed by the Charter to constitute the University Language Board (ULB). The ULB is a sub-committee of Senate and established in order to develop, implement, monitor, and review the University Language Policy and Plan (Implementation Framework). The establishment of the ULPDO is to operationalize the Language Policy and Plan. The Office reports quarterly to the ULB and annually to Senate.

The ULPDO sits within the Teaching and Learning Portfolio as illustrated in the Organogram below

ULPDO strives toward the following Vision and Mission

Vision

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

Mission

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).

Objectives

To achieve the mission, the office has set out the following objectives:

1.

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.

2.

To promote, facilitate and oversee the adherence to the statutory provisions in the development of technical terminology in isiZulu.

3.

To monitor and render quality translation, editing and interpreting services to the entire university community

4.

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.