Swahili is an essential working language for our agency. Interest in the language has increased in recent years, perhaps due to the growth of tourism to African countries or simply out of curiosity about the language of the well-known expression “Hakuna Matata”. This is not surprising when you consider that this language is one of the most widely spoken in Africa. When we think of an African language, we may immediately think of a language that uses the Arabic alphabet. However, the reality is different, as the Latin alphabet is used in most of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. This is precisely the case of Swahili, which uses the Swahili alphabet.

SWAHILI CULTURE

The culture associated with this language is very rich: from craftsmanship, with wood carving on the doors of houses, in furniture or even in dhows, the traditional boats of the area. Also its popular music, known as Taarab which blends Arabic and Indian-style melodies and poetically rich lyrics.

CULTURE

But it is not only the culture associated with Swahili that is important, but also the business opportunities with companies whose working language may be Swahili. Uganda is one of Africa’s leading exporters of coffee, Kenya is a major exporter of both tea and cut flowers, and Tanzania is a major exporter of precious stones and metals, mainly gold. An example of this possibility of trade with these countries is the Spanish brand Cafés Guilis. It uses coffee beans from many places. These include both Uganda and Kenya, with which it regularly trades to obtain the product.

TRANSLATION FROM SWAHILI

Finally, we have to mention the relevance of Swahili in translation. Nowadays, due to the large number of foreigners coming from Africa, where Swahili is the second most spoken language, it is very likely that we will meet people who require the help of a translator, either to communicate, so they need cultural mediation, or to translate any kind of document they need.

In these cases, it would be essential to have a translator specialised in Swahili who is familiar with the different dialectal varieties of Swahili. But translation is also essential in the business field for all documents arising for example from the export of the above-mentioned products, which are often lengthy and often contain very specific terminology. Therefore, the best option in both cases is to work with translation agencies, as they have a team of trained translators, which ensures their professionalism.