Nahashon Muraya

Swahili language expert with advanced training in linguistics and 4+ years of applied experience in translation, language analysis, and cross-cultural communication. Specialized in Swahili grammar, syntax, morphology, and semantics with demonstrated capability in linguistic annotation, error analysis, and model training for NLP systems. Combines formal academic training with practical project experience to enhance AI model reasoning, accuracy, and cultural nuance for Swahili-speaking populations

Swahili Linguistic Analyst & Translator at Freelance (2020-01 – Present)

Swahili language expert providing translation, linguistic annotation, and NLP model evaluation services

• Translated and linguistically annotated 500+ hours of Swahili audio and text data for NLP training corpora, focusing on dialectal variations and idiomatic expressions
• Conducted error analysis on Swahili output from large language models, documenting systematic failures in noun class agreement, verb conjugation, and tense usage
• Developed and refined Swahili language prompts for AI evaluation, improving model performance on tasks requiring cultural and contextual nuance
• Collaborated with computational linguists to create Swahili-specific evaluation metrics for model fairness, accuracy, and linguistic fluency
• Authored detailed linguistic reports outlining syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic error patterns in model-generated Swahili text

Language Research Assistant at University of Texas at Austin (2019-01 – 2020-12)

Research support for Swahili sociolinguistics and computational linguistics projects

• Assisted in corpus compilation and analysis for a Swahili sociolinguistics research project, tagging and categorizing speech samples across three regional dialects
• Supported the development of a Swahili morphology database used in academic publications and digital language tools
• Contributed to a peer-reviewed paper on Swahili noun class semantics and its implications for machine translation systems

Master of Arts in Linguistics – University of Texas at Arlington (2024-05)