Taking stock of the African Wordnet project: 5 years of development

This paper reports on the development of the prototype African Wordnet (AWN) which currently includes four languages. The resource has been developed by translating Common Base Concepts from English, and currently holds roughly 42 000 synsets. We describe here how some language specific and technical challenges have been overcome and discuss efforts to localise the content of the wordnet and quality assurance methods. A comparison of the number of synsets per language is given before concluding with plans to fast-track the development and for dissemination of the resource.