We offer professional Certified Afrikaans translations for your documents that are easy to understand and culturally appropriate. Our language translation company is comprised of professionals drawn from the regions where the languages are native, as well as from the entire world.
We use a combination of advanced people, unique processes and applied technologies to deliver you a better translation experience. We deliver reliable, high-quality translations with confirmed turnaround times at competitive prices.
Afrikaans Translation And Localization Service
Afrikaans also called Cape Dutch, West Germanic language of South Africa, developed from 17th-century Dutch, sometimes called Netherlandic, by the descendants of European (Dutch, German, and French) colonists, indigenous Khoisan peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope. Afrikaans and English are the only Indo-European languages among the many official languages of South Africa. Although Afrikaans is very similar to Dutch, it is clearly a separate language, differing from Standard Dutch in its sound system and its loss of case and gender distinctions.
Afrikaans was adopted for use in schools in 1914 and in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1919. A distinct Afrikaans literature evolved during the 20th century, and the first complete translation of the Bible into Afrikaans was published in 1933.
The language origins are complex and highly disputed. Its highest mutual intelligibility is with Dutch, yet it owes its departure from the language of the Netherlands to the influence of slaves brought forcibly to South Africa from South East Asia to work for Dutch-speaking white landowners in the Cape Colony.
Numerically, the descendants of these slaves – who self-identify as “Coloured” – remain the majority of Afrikaans speakers, yet Jamil Khan, a PhD critical diversity studies candidate at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says “culturally we are the minority”.
Afrikaans was formally recognised as a separate language from Dutch and adopted as an official language of South Africa in 1925, yet Khan describes this moment as an act of “mass cultural appropriation”.
Visibility remains a critical issue for Coloured Afrikaans speakers, who find themselves underrepresented in white-owned media.
Standadisation of Africaans Language
Standardised Afrikaans did not much resemble the language spoken by the Coloured community, and to this day little linguistic research has been done into documenting and institutionalising the variety spoken by the majority of Afrikaans speakers. The white variety is commonly referred to as “suiwer” or “pure”, contrasting it with the Coloured variety which is known as “kombuis” or “kitchen” in Afrikaans. When Coloured South Africans like Jamil Khan go to school, they are educated in the white variety of the language and taught to believe that it is somehow a better, more prestigious version of the language they grew up speaking at home.
Khan explains that this perception of inferiority persists.
“The lie that I’ve internalised over time is still there as a niggling thought at the back of my mind – that I only speak this bastardised dialect of what people consider a real language. Despite knowing all the history and facts about the language, that thought still holds some legitimacy in my mind,” he says.
Interesting Afrikaans Facts:
- Afrikaans and Dutch share many vocabulary words and only have slight differences in grammar style. The two languages are mutually intelligible, especially when written.
- Afrikaans is also similar to English
- The letters Q and C are rarely used in Afrikaans
- Afrikaans is sometimes called “Kitchen Dutch”
- Cricket and Rugby are popular sports for Afrikaans speakers
Contact us for your Afrikaans Translation Project
For that matter, if you are looking for Quality Afrikaans translation services in Africa done by native, professional and experienced translators, Ugaafrik Editors Ltd have a network of more than 2000 certified and native linguists who work on our English and Afrikaans projects to deliver in time.
Our translators are also skilled in Transcription and Interpreting and can handle all types of documents ranging from PPT, PDF, and Ms. Word to Ms. Excel. Also, they have experience and technical know-how in using several CAT Tools to deliver quality and the best translations.