Afrikaans Translation
Overview
We are a trusted provider of quality Afrikaans translation services.
With a presence in South Africa and the USA, we have been providing localisation and translation solutions in African languages to companies and organisations worlwide.
As a company we pride ourselves on our comprehensive service as well as our team of Afrikaans linguists and localizers.
We have all the technical Afrikaans knowledge you would expect from a top-drawer agency. We deal with all levels of translation, from legal to financial to oil & gas and everything in between. Websites, manuals, advertisements and contracts are but a few of the formats we regularly deal with. Even if you need typesetting, we can take care of this for you.
To find out how we can help you, please contact one of the team who can discuss your project in more detail.
Professional Afrikaans Translators
When working with Afrikaans you will be drawing upon the teamwork of your Relationship Manager, the Project Management Team and of course your translator(s).
Once we understand your particular text or job, our Project Management Team assign a linguist to your text. Your linguist will be a professional in that they are either qualified in the translation/linguists field and/or come with a profession, such as engineering, training, oil & gas or finance. This guarantees a solid understanding of the mechanics of translation as well as sector specific terminology. They always work into their mother tongue – so for a text from English into Afrikaans only a native speaker would carry this out.
The team is also made up of copywriters, Editors, designers, software engineers, etc. who are used in localization focused projects.
For more information, please contact a member of the team who can talk you through your specific project.
Quick Facts
- Alternate names & spellings: the Cape Dutch.
- Language ISO code: af/afr
- Number of speakers: around 6 million speakers
- Writing system: Latin alphabet around 1850 on
- Spoken in: Mainly in South Africa but also in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
About Afrikaans
The Afrikaans language (Afrikaans means African in Dutch) is a West Germanic language that is part of the Indo- European language family. It is the thirst most spoken language in South Africa (after Zulu and Xhosa) although the number of speakers is decreasing and it is mostly spoken as a second or a third language in South Africa.
Afrikaans, which has been considered a Dutch dialect until the twentieth century, was recognized as a different language in 1925. It was introduced by the Dutch settlers (but also settlers from Germany and France) who arrived in the Cape, South Africa, around the seventeenth century and although its roots are Dutch, the language has evolved and simplified its grammar to the point it became a new language also influenced by languages such as German, English and native African languages.
Afrikaans did not have its own writing system until the nineteenth century. Until that moment, and thanks to a nationalist movement, the Dutch writing system was the writing Standard system used.
After the Dutch colonization, the settlers established the High Dutch as the official language used by the government meanwhile Afrikaans used was reduced to being spoken by farmers and rural people, however, during the next century English assumed the dominant role leaded before by Dutch.
Despite the decreasing number of Afrikaans speakers the language is still considered one of the 11 official languages of South Africa and it is also still used in the South African literature.
Afrikaans dialects
Cape Afrikaans is the standard dialect of the language, having also the North-western Afrikaans and the South-western Afrikaans, which has a lot of words from English and Portuguese.