25 August 2026
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Story Tshepo Tsotetsi
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Photo Stephen Collett
a697a3e75b146fc79f4fff0600aa9400.jpg?sfvrsn=283cc20_1 "PhD Abstract Launch (248)")
The launch of the PhD Abstracts Translation Project brought together academics, language practitioners, and researchers to advance the use of African languages in research and knowledge production.
The University of the Free State (UFS) has launched a project focused on translating PhD abstracts into Sesotho, isiZulu and Afrikaans, opening access to doctoral research that has traditionally been communicated mainly in English. Since 2022, more than 150 abstracts have been translated through the PhD Abstracts Translation Project, creating another way for people to engage with research that speaks to the issues shaping their lives.
Led by the University’s Academy for Multilingualism in collaboration with UFS Library and Information Services (LIS) and language departments, the project is making research accessible in languages that are spoken, understood and lived by communities beyond the University. It is also boosting the case for African languages to have a place in research and scholarship, not only in everyday communication.
This matters because the University’s mandate to transform society is closely tied to the knowledge it produces. Research can investigate a community’s health, examine the law, interrogate education, or explore policies that affect people’s lives. But when that knowledge remains largely within academic and policy spaces, the people at the centre of those issues can be left knowing little about the research being produced about them. Making that research understandable in more languages creates another opportunity for people to know what is being discovered, to understand how it relates to them and, where they can, to use that knowledge to question, participate, and hold those with power to account.
“This project contributes directly to the intellectualisation of African languages, demonstrating their role and place as languages of scholarship in a diverse multilingual environment,” said
Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies. “This event is a transformative intervention into how knowledge is produced, shared, and democratised in South Africa and beyond. Every translated abstract expands access, strengthens inclusion, and enhances the public value of research.”
Bringing research closer to the people
Years of doctoral research can be devoted to understanding a community’s challenges, yet the findings may never reach those who live with those challenges every day. Not because the research is irrelevant to them, but because the language in which it is presented can place it out of reach.
This is the gap the project is trying to close.
Prof Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the Academy for Multilingualism, said this work marks an important step in making doctoral knowledge more visible, accessible, and multilingual. “The project seeks not only to translate the abstracts, but to advance the use of African languages of research, scholarship, and knowledge production,” she said.
The project also creates opportunities for speakers of these languages to access research produced at the University “in the language most meaningful to them”, Prof Ngubane said.
Beyond simply improving access, the work changes the relationship between research and the people beyond the University.
A person does not have to be a researcher to have a reason to understand research. A study on a health issue, for example, may have implications for people who have never stepped inside a university or read an academic paper. The same applies to research on education, law, science, or public policy.
At the same time, the translated abstracts are being digitised alongside the University’s wider scholarly output through LIS and made accessible through
Kovsie Scholar, the University’s open access institutional repository. Users can browse research according to abstract language and translation coverage.
Taken together, the work brings postgraduate research, language intellectualisation, the promotion of African languages, digital innovation, and societal impact into the same space. Prof Ngubane said these strands are part of the same effort to make knowledge produced at the University more visible and accessible.
Giving African languages room to carry knowledge
Making research accessible is only one part of what the project is changing, though. It is also changing what African languages are able to do within academic spaces.
Dr Elias Malete, Head of the
Department of African Languages, said the project contributes to the development of African languages through terminology development, the application of African language formation strategies, and the expansion of vocabulary. “These languages have been marginalised systematically and deliberately. We are now bringing them on board to the global stage,” Dr Malete said.
As specialised research is translated, the languages gain an opportunity to engage with concepts and terminology from different fields of research while expanding the vocabulary available to speakers. “Language carries culture and knowledge. It is a mirror in which we see ourselves,” Dr Malete added.
That same principle is reflected in the project’s place within academic spaces. Seeing complex research expressed in African languages gives these languages room to participate in scholarship, and shows their speakers that they can carry ideas that are often expressed almost exclusively in English.
At the launch, Prof Berrington Ntombela of the University of Limpopo delivered the keynote address and commended the UFS’ multilingual work in the higher education space. He said the project should allow society to “decipher knowledge in every possible way”, ensuring that knowledge produced by researchers remains linguistically relevant to the communities around it.
The work is still growing beyond the 150 abstracts translated in the first four years, but its purpose is already clear: to make the knowledge produced through years of postgraduate research available in more of the languages through which South Africans understand their world. In doing so, the UFS is bringing research a little closer to the society it is meant to serve.
“Multilingualism as demonstrated by this launch is not simply about language,” Prof Reddy said. “Every abstract translated gives real and tangible meaning as an investment in scholarship, in postgraduate success, in language development, and in accessibility and inclusion. To fully realise responsible societal futures requires participation from diverse voices, perspectives, and linguistic communities. We are actively creating a knowledge system that creates greater equity, belonging, and intellectual citizenship.”