South Africa by Language
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9 of the country's 11 languages are African, reflecting a variety of ethnic groupings which nonetheless have a great deal in common in terms of background, culture and descent.
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The 4 languages that the Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele peoples speak belong to the Nguni language group and are mutually intelligible.
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The 3 languages that the Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho and Western Sotho or Tswana speak belong to the Sotho language group and are mutually intelligible.
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The other two languages, Venda and Tsonga are minority languages and are not understood by other speakers. However, Venda and Tsonga speakers usually understand either a language from the Nguni or Sotho language groups.
Language Usage
- Zulu - 23.8% - is the most commonly spoken home language
- Xhosa - 17.6%
- Afrikaans - 13.3%
- Sepedi - 9.4%
- Tswana - 8.2%
- English - 8.2%
- Sesotho - 7.9%
- Tsonga - 4.4%
- Swati - 2.7%
- Venda - 2.3%
- Ndebele - 1.6%
Xhosa is spoken by more than 80% of South Africans in the Eastern Cape, while almost 80% of people in KwaZulu-Natal speak Zulu.
Zulu is also the most frequently spoken home language in Gauteng, but at a much smaller percentage. In Cape Town and its surrounds, Afrikaans is most often used.
Official Provincial Languages
Resources
International Association for Translation & Intercultural Studies (IATIS) - http://www.iatis.org
European Society for Translation Studies (EST) - http://www.est-translationstudies.org
Opensource software translation project - http://translate.org.za
South African Translators’ Institute (SATI) - http://translators.org.za
Jacana Media - http://www.jacana.co.za
International Association of Interpreters (AIIC) - http://www.AIIC.net
Interpreting equipment:
Congress Rental Pty Ltd - http://www.conference.co.za
Rentnet - http://www.pinnacle.co.za/rentnet
Conference Communications - http://www.confcomm.co.za
Research
Kruger 2008a - Translating public information texts on health issues into languages of limited diffusion in South Africa
Kruger 2008b Language & Politics - Translation, self-translation and apartheid-imposed conflict
Kruger 2006 Muratho - From the Ivory Tower to the Market Place and Back: Completing the Circle
Wallmach 2006 JLS - Feminist Translation Strategies: Different or Derived?
Wallmach 2006 The Linguist - Is South Africa a role model for other multilingual countries? A translator’s perspective
Wallmach 2005 IJSL&L - From sphaza to makoya!: A BA degree for court interpreters in South Africa
Kruger 2004 SAJLS - The Role of Discourse Markers in an Afrikaans Stage Translation of The Merchant of Venice
Wallmach 2004 Language Matters - ‘Pressure players’ or ‘choke artists’? How do Zulu simultaneous interpreters handle the pressure of interpreting in a legislative context?
Kruger 2004 Language Matters - Shakespeare in Afrikaans: A corpus-based study of involvement in different registers of drama translation
Wallmach 2002 Current Writing - “Seizing the surge of language by its soft, bare skull”: Simultaneous interpreting, the Truth Commission and Country of my skull
Kruger 2002 Acta Theologica - Corpus-based translation research: Its development and implications for general, literary and Bible translation
Kruger & Wallmach 1997 SAJAL - Research methodology for the description of a source text and its translation(s) - a South African perspective
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