Conversion of the English-Xhosa Dictionary for Nurses to a Linguistic Linked Data Framework

Abstract

The English-Xhosa Dictionary for Nurses (EXDN) is a bilingual, unidirectional printed dictionary in the public domain, with English and isiXhosa as the language pair. By extending the digitisation efforts of EXDN from a human-readable digital object to a machine-readable state, using Resource Description Framework (RDF) as the data model, semantically interoperable structured data can be created, thus enabling EXDN’s data to be reused, aggregated and integrated with other language resources, where it can serve as a potential aid in the development of future language resources for isiXhosa, an under-resourced language in South Africa. The methodological guidelines for the construction of a Linguistic Linked Data framework (LLDF) for a lexicographic resource, as applied to EXDN, are described, where an LLDF can be defined as a framework: (1) which describes data in RDF, (2) using a model designed for the representation of linguistic information, (3) which adheres to Linked Data principles, and (4) which supports versioning, allowing for change. The result is a bidirectional lexicographic resource, previously bounded and static, now unbounded and evolving, with the ability to extend to multilingualism.