The South African government announced on Tuesday it is about to embark on a project to bring indigenous languages into line with current international norms.

This was the message from Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Arts, Culture, Science and Technology when she announced an innovative language scheme at the Durban Convention Centre.

The minister said Africa as a whole had a woeful history as far as honouring the languages of the people of the continent was concerned.

"African languages' biggest problem stems from the days of colonialism and the ill-conceived idea that African languages were inferior to colonial languages and unfit for any functional role in business or politics," said the minister.

As part of a strategy to reverse this situation the minister announced three initiatives -- a bursary scheme, the establishment of language research and development centres (LRDCs) and the launch of a human language technologies (HLT) initiative.

"I would like to state that it is the government's goal to have all the official languages of South Africa adequately developed in order to serve the complex and diverse requirements of modern communication," she said.

"Developing a language requires the use of realistic strategies, and a proper plan of action with clear goals and objectives. When one thinks about developing languages one has to think about research, which provides the backbone of all language development strategies.

"It is for this reason that we have decided to establish language research and development centres and to link them with academic institutions. The mandates of these centres are terminology development, literature development and research, and language planning research.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the human language technologies unit would co-ordinate the work that was done in terms of developing and managing electronic language and speech resources in all the official languages of South Africa.

Department spokesman Xolile Mfaxa said the new technology could be used in all sections of society such as universities, government and the private sector in promoting the use of indigenous languages.

"We want to see capacity built along the lines of terminology so there is no excuse for not using a particular language -- for example not using Zulu because it doesn't have certain technical terms."

Mfaxa said five bursaries worth R40,000 each, were awarded to post-graduate students in the fields of translation and editing, interpreting, terminology development, human language technologies and language planning.

All of these initiatives follow the February 2003 adoption by government of the National Language Policy Framework - Sapa.