Africa is the most linguistically endowed continent home to one-third of the world’s languages. However, many African languages are being marginalized nowadays due to the domination of the languages that colonizers brought to the continent in the past, such as English, French, and Spanish. Therefore, there is a constant need for the African people to revive their indigenous African languages.
When a language is endangered, it means the loss of its culture, traditions, and history. Hence, keeping languages alive is important for Africans to feel respected and keep their cultural identity. Indeed, just speaking the languages cannot empower the African languages and cultures. For a language to be preserved, it has to be recorded and written in documents, and books, and even published electronically.
In this article, we will shed light on how to revive African languages and how Afrolingo’s translation services help in reviving and empowering African languages. Let’s dive deeper.
How to Revive the African Languages
As many African languages are on the verge of extinction, researchers in Africa are going the extra mile to keep them alive. Here are some of the ways through which we can save a lot of languages from endangerment. Let’s have a look at them.
Speaking the African Languages in Public Events
To help keep the African languages, we should encourage speaking them at official events such as international conferences so that people can recognize them and understand their significance. Presidents and government officials should take this initiative to convince people of the importance of these languages.
Teaching the African Languages in Schools and Centers
Schools need to start teaching the indigenous African languages to students. Research has shown that students understand the learning materials and are more willing to study them when they are written in their own mother tongues. Moreover, there have to be language centers specialized in teaching African languages to give the chance to foreigners to learn them and know their importance.
Enriching the Vocabulary of African Languages
Actually, some African languages are threatened to be extinct soon because of the lack of vocabulary. However, this problem can be handled easily. Just like many other languages, we can borrow vocabulary from other languages. For example, English has many borrowed words from Latin and French.
Encouraging the publication of Written Content
Languages last by having them recorded either manually or electronically. Thus, we can save African languages by encouraging the writing of books in the indigenous African languages. Moreover, content can be written electronically on the internet by encouraging apps to add African languages among their language options. In this case, Africans can publish content in their own mother tongues on different social media platforms.
Translating the African Languages
The translation is considered a significant language grower. We can preserve many languages by translating them since translation helps to add more vocabulary to the language and modernize it.
How Afrolingo Helps in the Empowerment of African Languages
Afrolingo is a professional language service provider that offers translation, localization, and interpretation services in a wide variety of African languages.
We employ in-country professional translators who are well-versed not only in the languages, but also in the culture, history, and politics of the target markets.
Afrolingo offers translation services in almost all industries that interact globally including:
- Engineering
- Marketing
- Consumer Electronics
- Training & Education
- Medical
- Legal
- Software Development
- E-commerce and retail
Providing extensive language translation services in almost all African languages will save such languages from extinction and help businesses approach the native speakers of such indigenous languages, and win their trust.
As languages can be saved from endangerment through being written, our localization services can help languages stay alive by localizing websites, marketing materials, and business documents. For instance, many international companies have localized their content into many African languages such as Vodacom, MTN, Checkers and Nandos.
Through our high-quality translation and localization services, we hit two birds with one stone by preserving African languages and cultures from extinction and helping you reach a wider number of African customers.
If you are looking for a trustworthy translation agency in South Africa, look no further than Afrolingo! We can help your message travel to African countries successfully. Request a quote now!
