Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

A partnership to boost isiZulu and Sesotho has been penned

11 November 2022 | Story Edzani Nephalela and Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane | Photo iStock

The UFS and UKZN have formalised an agreement on a Language Collaboration Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to advance the development of the Sesotho and IsiZulu as academic languages.

The University of the Free State (UFS) has forged an exciting new partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) to promote the two provinces’ most widely spoken languages, Sesotho and IsiZulu.

This historic collaboration will see these institutions employing their skills, expertise, and resources to advance the development of the Sesotho and IsiZulu as academic languages through the development of terminology for various disciplines and research collaborations among other activities.

The UFS formalised the agreement by signing a Language Collaboration Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with UKZN. The MOU process, facilitated by Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the UFS Academy for Multilingualism, and Nikile Ntsababa, UFS Registrar, was sealed by Dr Engela Van Staden, UFS Vice-Rector: Academic.

The objectives of the collaboration are to:

• allow the UFS open access to all the UKZN isiZulu materials and UKZN open access to all UFS Sesotho language terminology, corpus materials, terminology banks, and applications for various disciplines;

• develop the Sesotho terminology for various disciplines;

• assist in identifying and closing any gaps in the UFS’s development of isiZulu terminology and in the UKZN’s development of isiZulu, and further develop the relevant language terminology of various disciplines in order to fill any existing gaps;

• share expertise through hosting webinars, seminars, colloquia, and workshops on Sesotho and isiZulu terminology development;

• explore research opportunities regarding the development of Sesotho and isiZulu terminology for various disciplines; and

• share expertise and resources in all human language technology development initiatives.

“The UKZN has championed the intellectualisation of IsiZulu over the years. We do not want to reinvent the wheel,” Dr Ngubane said. “Our focus now is on the acceleration of the development of Sesotho. Our vision and mission is to be the hub for the advancement of Sesotho at regional, national, and international levels. Collaboration with UKZN is instrumental in achieving this mandate.”

The Academy for Multilingualism said it considers this collaboration historic and groundbreaking because resources will now be invested in the development of Sesotho.

News Archive

Invitation to International Cardiothoracic congress

2011-06-01

Our Faculty of Health Sciences is pleased to announce the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgeons Academy (EACTS) and Hannes Meyer Cardiothoracic Surgery Registrar Symposium, which will be taking place on our Bloemfontein Campus from 3 to 5 June 2011.

The congress first started in 2004 as the Hannes Meyer Registrar Congress, which was jointly hosted by the UFS and the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of South Africa. This event was hosted on our Bloemfontein Campus annually, except in 2009, when the University of Cape Town was the host.

The focus of this year’s symposium is new techniques in perfusion and surgery, with specific emphasis on research methodology, inflammatory lung disease and cardiac surgery in children and adults, which can be performed without the aid of a heart-lung machine in developing countries.

Prof. Francis Smit, Head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Faculty of Health Sciences, says EACTS identified the UFS as the Sub-Saharan training unit they will support in terms of training. The first of these symposiums was accordingly hosted in 2010.

This year’s symposium will be attended by approximately 70 delegates from cardiothoracic units from across South Africa and 10 doctors from 6 African countries, as well as 30 perfusion technologists.

“We are fulfilling a leadership role in Africa and South Africa with this course,” says Prof. Smit.

Several international visitors will be present, like Prof. Paul Sergeant and Prof. Marko Turina, two previous EACTS presidents and Prof. Charles Yankah, a Ghanaian Cardiothoracic Surgeon from the Charite Medical University in Berlin. The current president of the European Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion (EBCP), Mr Frank Merkle, will also be one of three international speakers delivering lectures on perfusion technology.

You are invited to attend the conference on the following dates:

Date: 3 - 5 June 2011

Time: 09:00

Venue: Faculty of Health Sciences in the Francois Retief Building on our Bloemfontein Campus

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept