Metaglossia: The Translation World

Homer's 3,000-year-old Iliad, set during the Trojan War, has been translated into English dozens of times, but only one version includes the word braai, Afrikaans for barbecue.

South Africa is one of a few countries that can boast about having a multicultural society which is so proudly reflected in our colourful flag. We have gone as far as dubbing ourselves the “Rainbow nation” in celebration of our diversity.
This of course has placed us in a unique position when it comes to most countries considering that they have no more than 2 to 3 official languages. We as the Republic of South Africa have a total of 11 official languages. You heard right, we can say hello in eleven languages including English, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Tswana, Zulu, Sesotho among others (this column is not enough to list all of them).
While this may be something we hold dear to our hearts, it does present its own challenges.
Breaking barriers
A colleague of mine recently quizzed me about my generation’s (I don’t know what that means) lack of appreciate for the vernacular language. To quote her she said “kutheni uthanda uthetha isilungu kangaka kodwa uthetha nomntu omnyama” and my immediate response was why shouldn’t I? Does speaking English to my fellow black brother mean I have no respect for the Xhosa language? I don’t think so but sometimes it’s better to say things in the queen’s language.
There have been calls to most schools and universities to start offering classes and lectures in other languages as English and Afrikaans do not represent most of the people in this country.
While I completely agree with this sentiment, how practical is it to have academic institutions offering lectures in all eleven official languages. With our current ailing education system, can it handle the infrastructure that would be needed to implement these plans to promote these ‘neglected’ languages?
Direct translation
President Jacob Zuma in August came under fire for saying that single women need to have kids in order to practice to be mothers. The President further fuelled the fires by saying that in a democracy the minority have less rights to the majority after a parliamentary question was posed by the tenacious DA leader Lindiwe Mazibuko.
Another colleague of mine (I have lots of those) said the media misunderstands the president because he thinks in Isizulu therefore he screws up when he is trying to covert his thoughts to English. The accuracy of this may be a mystery but it’s not completely improbable. Now direct translation is something that is prevalent in a multicultural society like ours.

A Chinese writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature several days ago, marking a milestone in the country's continued integration with the world, a South African newspaper said on Wednesday.

On Thursday, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund announced that this year's Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chinese writer Mo Yan.

"As the first Chinese writer living in China to be awarded the prize, Mo Yan is a heavyweight in the contemporary Chinese literature scene, with China's prominent Mao Dun Literature Prize won last year and some prestigious international literature awards nominated," said the newspaper Business Day in its editorial.

Due to the leading contemporary writers in China wrote their compositions in their native tongue, only a limited number of their works could be translated into English, leading the global audience to be in a difficult position to have access to works of those Chinese writers.

However, the contemporary Chinese literature remained esoteric to the readers in the rest of the world given the complexities of the Chinese language and the dearth of skillful and seamless translation.

The editorial noted that the Chinese writer's triumph on the international stage is a positive sign that "the world is gaining better access to the contemporary Chinese literature."

As a Chinese writer, Mo Yan grew up with a mixed experience ranging from the turbulent Cultural Revolution to the far-reaching economic reforms, including the life as a peasant in the countryside, a worker at a factory and a soldier in the army.

"China is one of the most influential countries today, and Mo Yan's winning will help the readers in the world to be better to comprehend his works and his country," the editorial said.

The Chinese writer's award means "China is steadfastly making its mark in the world not only in the political and economic spheres, but also culturally," it said.

UDGES 2012

SATI is grateful to the persons below who served as judges for the 2012 Prizes (listed alphabetically).

Gretha Aalbers has been working as a freelance language practitioner in Cape Town for close on 30 years, mainly in educational and general publishing, as well as medical and general advertising. Her qualifications and formal working experience are in teaching and publishing, and her main interests are English and Afrikaans literature. She has been involved with SATI Boland since 1990, serving alternately as secretary and chairperson. Gretha is working on a thesis for an MPhil in translation at Stellenbosh University. She and her husband Cor have two sons and a daughter, all living in Cape Town.
Mariëtta Alberts started her career as a terminologist with the Department of Arts and Culture. She later went to the Human Sciences Research Council, where she did research into lexicography, terminology and computational linguistics. She took early retirement from the Pan South African Language Board, where she held the position Director: Terminology Development. She assisted with terminology development in all official languages, the Khoe and San languages and South African Sign Language by training members of the national language bodies, members of national, provincial and local government and even universities in the basic principles and practice of terminology and terminography. She is currently research fellow at the Research Unit for Languages and Literature in SA Context, North-West University, Potchefstroom campus. She is also an executive member of the Centre for Legal Terminology in African Languages (CLTAL) and looks after the Centre’s database as well as that of the Centre for Political and Related Terminology in Southern African Languages (CEPTSA).
François Bloemhof has published approximately 60 books and until proven otherwise is the only author worldwide to have written so extensively for the adult, teenage and children’s markets. He has received multiple awards in all three categories, including the De Kat prize for his debut novel, Die nag het net een oog. His other prizes include several ATKV-Veertjies, for which young readers select their own winning books. He has also compiled anthologies for various publishing houses. Apart from books, François has achieved success in writing for the stage (a cabaret and two teenage plays) and radio (dramas and serials). He is a freelance language practitioner as well as copywriter, reviewer, journalist and songwriter. He has also been Sarie magazine’s fiction editor and book editor at Die Burger. He lives in Durbanville.
Ilze Brüggemann and her family live in Scottburgh. She is a freelance language practitioner, enjoys poetry (both reading and writing it) and completely agrees with Sylvia Plath who once said: “I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I’m writing one.” Her free time has been taken over by her young daughter Leonie, but given half a chance she walks the dogs on the beach and loves to read.
Prof. Annette Combrink worked as a teacher before becoming an English lecturer at Potchefstroom (now North-West) University in 1972. She has spent the rest of her career at this institution in a range of capacities, and is currently, following formal retirement, the Director: Institutional Advancement. She served as chairperson of the South African Translators’ Institute for 10 years and of the National Standards Body for Language and Communication Studies of SAQA, as well as of various other educational organisations. She has been editor-in-chief of Koers (an interdisciplinary accredited journal), vice-editor of Literator (until 1999), and an editorial board member of the English Academy Review, the Journal for Literary Studies and the South African Theatre Journal. She also acts as a panel member of the National Research Foundation. She has read 36 papers at international conferences, and has published articles in local and international journals. She has been an active freelance translator for many years, working in a variety of fields, but with special interest in the field of literary translation, in which field she supervised a number of students of Translation Studies.
Leon de Kock is a scholar, translator and writer. He is the author of Civilising Barbarians (monograph) and three volumes of poetry (Bloodsong, gone to the edges and Bodyhood), and translator of Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk (1999), Intimately Absent (2010, Cas Vos), Duskant die Donker / Before it Darkens (2011, Cas Vos), In Love’s Place (forthcoming, translation of Etienne van Heerden’s In Stede van die Liefde) and The Underworld (forthcoming, translation of Ingrid Winterbach’s Die Benederyk). His first novel, Bad Sex, was published in 2011 by Umuzi. He has edited several collections of South African writing, and published many critical articles on South African literature, literary historiography and literary translation. He has won several awards, including the Pringle Prize for Poetry (1995), the SATI Award for Outstanding Translation (2000), The Pringle Prize for Best Scholarly Article (2011), and the SALA award for literary translation (2011, for Intimately Absent).
Franci Greyling is Associate Professor in the School for Languages on the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University and also the subject chairperson for Creative Writing. She specialises in creative writing, children's and youth literature and interdisciplinary creative and research projects. She has herself published various books for young people and is also responsible for Storiewerf, a website for children's and youth literature.
Simon Kemisho has a Postgraduate Diploma in Translation (Wits University) and has worked as a translator (Setswana/English) since 1984. He is accredited for English-Setswana translation and is a sworn translator of the High Court. He is the founder and owner of The Translation World, an agency that offers language services in the South African official languages as well as major world languages. He served on the SATI Executive for four years and on the Advisory Board of Technikon Northern Gauteng and the Editors Forum of the Language Portal of Lesaka (Department of Communications).
Manzo Khulu has a background in human resources management with some 30 years’ experience in the promotion of industrial communication in a cross-cultural environment in both South African and international manufacturing companies. After years of part-time translation and interpreting he became involved in the language practice field on a full-time basis in 2006 and now runs a successful freelance practice as a SATI-accredited translator. Manzo has been a member of the SATI Council since 2009, and his passion is the promotion and development of South Africa’s indigenous official languages into fully-fledged domestic vehicles that meet the rigorous communication needs of the modern information-driven world.
Prof. Alet Kruger taught and trained translators and interpreters at the University of South Africa for 26 years before taking early retirement at the end of 2007. She supervised and examined numerous master’s and doctoral students in Translation Studies at UNISA and other universities in the country. She is the author of various scholarly articles on translation and corpus-based translation studies published in local and international journals. She was the major editor of the book Corpus-based Translation Studies: Research and Applications that was published in 2011 by The Continuum International Publishing Group in the UK. She is now full-time Office Manager of Multilingua Translation/Interpretation Services (www.multilingua.co.za), an agency that specializes in the official South African languages, languages from the African continent and various European languages. She served for more than 20 years on the Executive of the South African Translators’ Institute in the portfolios of publication and documentation. She still serves on the Publication Committee of the International Association of Translation and Interpreting Studies (IATIS) and also on the editorial boards of Babel, Hermeneus, the SA Journal of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and the John Benjamins Translation Library series. She is one of the translation consultants of the Southern African Bible Society, which is involved in a new translation of the Bible into Afrikaans for 2015. She has been an active professional translator for more than 30 years and, among others, has translated into Afrikaans The Coastal Guide of South Africa (Jacana, 2007), Find It: Your Guide to Kruger (Jacana, 2008) and Exploring Our Provinces (Jacana, 2009).
Peter Mekgwe is a SATI-accredited freelance translator and interpreter in English and Setswana.
Magadi Mohasoa qualified as a pharmacist in 1994 and started her career in the pharmaceutical industry. She still consults for the pharmaceutical industry, but has always loved languages and qualified as an accredited translator with SATI in 1998. She has been in the translation industry ever since, as a result of her background working mainly in the fields of engineering, medicine and localization. Magadi is also an entrepreneur, running her own publishing company, Bridal Press.
Prof. Piet Swanepoel teaches Afrikaans Linguistics and Document Design in the Department of Afrikaans and Theory of Literature of the University of South Africa. His research focuses on document design, cognitive semantics and lexicography. He has been a member of Euralex since 1985 and of Afrilex since its inception. He has published numerous papers on lexicography in national and international publications.
Thomas van der Walt is professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa. He is the coordinator of the Children’s Literature Research Unit at Unisa, editor of Mousaion, an accredited journal in Library and Information Science, and editorial member of Sankofa: Journal for African Children’s Literature of the University of Minnesota, USA. He is founder and board member of Biblionef SA and was responsible for several cultural projects with children for South African embassies.

The most important role that history plays is of telling a people where they still must go and what they still must be” – Prof. John Henrick Clarke. Going into today’s Golden Jubilee Independence celebrations, there is quite a lot from our history that we would benefit from, but only if we take heed. While the jubilee may seem, on the outside, to be a pseudo-event, there is depth, meaning, and substance to it if analysed with discerning, in the same way that there is depth, meaning, and substance to the national symbols.

But for the symbols to have real significance, they need to resonate with the reality lived by the nation’s citizens. Take the National Anthem: it is a very graceful piece of composition, musically-speaking, given the melody (tune), the rhythm (beat), and the harmony (blending of voices, if sang by a proper choir - it was terribly abused at the recent Olympic Games in London, where it was played much too fast as Stephen Kiprotich received his gold medal. Maybe they were in a bit of a hurry, as Kiprotich’s was the final medal ceremony on closing day, but then again, Uganda’s was the shortest of all 202 competing countries).

The words are poetic: there is rhyme in words like ‘hand’ & ‘stand’ and ‘thee’ & ‘free’ in the first stanza, ‘give’ & ‘live’ and ‘all’ & ‘call’ in the second, and also with ‘grown’ & ‘crown’ together with ‘land’ & ‘stand’ in the final one. Some have even deemed the Anthem a prayer.

Linda Rode and Elsa Silke Among Winners of the 2012 SATI Prizes for Outstanding Translation
by Luso on Oct 5th, 2012
Alert! Linda Rode, Elsa Silke and the team behind the Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: isiZulu and English have won 2012 SATI Prizes for Outstanding Translation.

The South African Translators’ Institute (SATI) has awarded Linda Rode the Outstanding Literary Translation Prize for Bitter Heuning, the translation into Afrikaans of Hermione Suttner’s unpublished English manuscript Bitter Honey. Elsa Silke won the SATI Prize for Outstanding Translation of Children’s Literature for In the Never-Ever Wood, the English translation of Linda Rode’s In die Nimmer-Immer-Bos.
The editorial team for the Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: isiZulu and English, consisting of Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, Nomusa Sibiya, Arnett Wilkes, Megan Hall, and Fred Pheiffer received the SATI Prize for Outstanding Translation Dictionaries. No prizes were awarded in the categories for Outstanding Non-fiction Transaltion and Outstanding Service Translation.
Press release
Winners of 2012 SATI Prizes for Outstanding Translation and Dictionaries announced:
As part of its celebrations for International Translation Day on Saturday 29 September 2012, the South African Translators’ Institute awarded its 2012 Prizes for Outstanding Translation and Dictionaries, which recognise excellence in published translations and dictionaries in South Africa’s official languages.
The prizes were initiated in the year 2000 in an effort to encourage the publication of translations of original works in the indigenous languages of the country. Associated objectives are to improve the quality of such translations, to promote multilingualism and in particular the use and development of the indigenous languages, to promote cross-cultural understanding and to raise awareness of the role of translators in uniting the people of South Africa. The competition is held every three years and the winners announced around International Translation Day (30 September).
A total of 25 entries were received for this year’s competition, which is divided into five categories – literary translation (three entries), translation of non-fiction work (one entry),
translation of children’s literature (11 entries), service translation (one entry) and dictionaries (eight entries). This year prizes have been awarded in three categories, with the winners each receiving R10 000.

M-Net has revealed the shortlists for its prestigious M-Net Literary Awards , the only South African book awards that honour well-crafted novels in all our official languages.

M-Net has revealed the shortlists for its prestigious M-Net Literary Awards, the only South African book awards that honour well-crafted novels in all our official languages. The winners, who will each receive a cash prize of R50 000, will be announced on Friday, 19 October in Johannesburg.

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“Judging by the number of entries for this year’s M-Net Literary Awards, it would seem that South African readers are spoilt for choice and that the printed word is holding its own in the digital age,” says Hettie Scholtz, convenor of the M-Net Literary Awards.

A total of 85 titles were submitted this year - an indication that the South African publishing industry and in particular the novel, is fit and healthy in spite of severe pressure from economic and electronic spheres.

According to Scholtz, entries spoke of mature authorship, with youthful and daring storylines that both surprised and delighted the judges. “Narrowing down the selection to a long list of 15 was not difficult. However, deciding on the final five in each of the categories proved quite daunting.”

The top novels that finally made it onto the respective shortlists: (in alphabetical order according to the author’s surname)

English:
Homemaking for the Down-at-heart - Finuala Dowling (Kwela Books)
Lost Ground - Michiel Heyns (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
The Landscape Painter - Craig Higginson (Picador Africa)
Shooting Angels - Christopher Hope (Atlantic Books)
Nineveh - Henrietta Rose-Innes (Umuzi)

Source: Department of Arts and Culture, South African Government Online
A country’s symbols – seal, motto, flag, anthem, coat of arms and natural symbols – tell its story and play a crucial role in building pride and a sense of belonging. South Africa’s national symbols are rich in heritage, and tell the stories of the country’s abundant natural and cultural diversity.
The Department of Arts and Culture is the custodian of all our national symbols and is tasked with educating all South Africans in their meaning and history, especially during the annual national Heritage Month, held during September.
In April 2012 the South African Post Office released a stamp set depicting all the national symbols. It can be purchased at post offices countrywide, or online through the virtual post office.
Decoding the coat of arms
A coat of arms of any country is the highest visual symbol of that country, and is part of the great seal, which confers absolute authority on all documents bearing it. South Africa’s new coat of arms was launched on Freedom Day, 27 April 2000, during former president Thabo Mbeki’s administration. It was created by designer Iaan Bekker and replaced the former coat of arms which had been in use since 1932.
The coat of arms is elegant and contemporary in design and distinctly egg-shaped. In the lower portion, known as the oval shape of foundation, the first element is the motto in a green curve, which is completed by two symmetrically placed pairs of elephant tusks pointing upwards. Within the oval shape formed by the tusks are two symmetrical ears of wheat symbolising fertility, which in turn frame a centrally placed gold shield, reminiscent of a drum.

Jacana Media is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of a South African classic, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum / Imisindo Yesighubu Sesikhumba Senkomo by Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali.
Originally published in 1971 by Lionel Abrahams’ Renoster Books, it quickly became a classic but has been unavailable for many years. The new edition carries a simultaneous isiZulu translation of the poems, and a new foreword by Nadine Gordimer.
“Not surprising that Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, with his deep understanding of the human psyche, master of the ultimate in communication – undreamt of by Twitter – the poet’s power to reach from the conscious to the depths of the subconscious, has added to Sounds of a Cowhide Drum in this new edition the beat of poems written in his mother tongue, isiZulu.”
– Nadine Gordimer, Foreword to Sounds of a Cowhide Drum/Imisindo Yesighubu Sesikhumba Senkomo by Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali
“Poetry is the language of emotions and a medium for articulating feelings, opinions, ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Much more than an artistic pastime, it is the spiritual repository of human dreams which originate from the depths of the subconscious.”
– Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, The Light of the Poetic Spirit, SGI Quarterly
About the author
Dr Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Southern Africa English Academy Poetry Award in 1971, the London Poetry International Award in 1973 and the South African Lifetime Achievement Literary Award (SALA) from the Department of Arts and Culture in 2007. He taught at the New York City College of Technology and is founder and deputy headmaster of Pace Community College in Jabulani, Soweto. Having worked in the United States for many years, Mtshali returned to South Africa and now lives in Soweto.
Book details...

http://jacana.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/09/05/jacana-releases-new-edition-of-oswald-mtshalis-sounds-of-a-cowhide-drum/

We add new jobs in South Africa on this website every.

REFERENCE: 2012/226/GP
JOB TITLE: COURT INTERPRETER (1 POST)
CENTRE: MAGISTRATE SOWETO
SALARY: R108 078 – R 127 311 per annum. The successful
candidate will be required to sign a performance
agreement.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Grade 12 or equivalent qualification;
• Tertiary qualification will be an advantage;
• Applicants will be subjected to a Language test;
• A valid drivers’ license will be an added advantage.
Key Language requirements: a combination of the following will be
considered.
English, Xitsonga, Venda, Isizulu, South Sotho, North Sotho,
Swati will serve as an added advantage.
Skills and Competencies:
• Computer literacy (MS Office);
• Good communication(written and verbal);
• Administration and organizational skills;
• Ability to maintain interpersonal relations;
• Accuracy and attention to detail.
DUTIES:

DIE ANTWOORD was in town last week. The South African band raps and sings in a hypnotic mixture of Afrikaans and English, switching constantly between the two. In the music video for a popular song, “Baby’s On Fire” (warning: violence and bilingual profanity), the opening skit occurs mostly in Afrikaans and the song is performed mostly in English. In another song, “Enter the Ninja”, the opening monologue and song are delivered almost entirely in English. “Wat Kyk Jy” is mostly Afrikaans. Die Antwoord is from Cape Town, the capital of the mostly Afrikaans-speaking Western Cape. The demographic makeup of their home city is changing, though, and English is gaining ground. Die Antwoord's bilingual lyrics, in a way, represent an evolving relationship between young Afrikaans-speakers, Afrikaans, and English. The band is led by a white Afrikaner couple, but they insist that the worldview they purvey through their music is post-racial and post-monolingual, representing a maturing South Africa not adequately presented abroad.

Following the political rise of the National Party, an Afrikaner nationalist party, in 1948, Afrikaans became the favored language of the central government in South Africa until 1994. In contrast, the current South African constitution affords Afrikaans equality with ten other official languages, including English. Afrikaans’s historical association with apartheid has been to the benefit of English as a lingua franca in business and government.

Afrikaans was once a major medium of higher education, too, but that has changed. Anne-Marie Beukes, a professor of linguistics at the University of Johannesburg, wrote in an email: “A significant achievement of Afrikaans is the fact that—in the course of the twentieth century—it is one of only a few languages...that has been adequately standardised in order to function as a fully-fledged language of science and technology and for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching purposes.” Still, she noted, the use of Afrikaans in universities is waning rapidly. The situation is similar in primary education: according to a recent report by the Department of Basic Education, 12% of primary education is conducted in Afrikaans, compared to 65% in English. (Roughly 13% of South Africans speak Afrikaans as a mother tongue, and 8% speak English.)

The South African government took a step towards promoting the equitable use of the country's 11 official languages when Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile tabled the Use of Official Languages Bill in Parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday.

The Bill was approved without dissent and will now go to the National Council of Provinces for concurrence.

It is aimed at ensuring that the government elevates the status of indigenous languages, in particular, and promotes their use. The Bill will also make a contribution towards the national effort to promote multilingualism.

"This Bill is not aimed at diminishing the significance and use of any of the South African official languages. Through this Bill, we will promote equitable use of all official languages," Mashatile said.

"In the long run, we will endeavor to equally promote the use of sign language."

It also means South Africans will have an opportunity to use the official languages of their choice in interacting with government.

"This, we believe, will strengthen efforts to ensure equal access to government services and programmes and contribute to the goal of building an empowered citizenry," he said.

Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/services/languages-080812.htm#ixzz230V1MagY

Cape Town - The use of official languages bill will make a massive contribution towards promoting multilingualism, Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile said on Tuesday.

Speaking in the National Assembly during debate on the bill, he said it was aimed at ensuring that the government elevated the status of especially indigenous languages and promoted their widespread use.

"We wish to reiterate that this bill is not aimed at diminishing the significance and use of any of the South African official languages.

"Through this bill we will promote equitable use of all official languages," he said.

The bill would enable South Africans to use the official languages of their choice in interacting with the government.

Call for papers -- Special issue
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Volume 31(3), 2013

The sociology of translation in a developmental context

Guest editors: Sergey Tyulenev and Marlie van Rooyen

One of the ways in which one can conceptualise the evolution of Translation
Studies as a scholarly discipline over the past five decades is as a series of
shifts from micro to macro approaches, from text to context, from language to
society, and from colonially exclusive to post-colonially inclusive paradigms.
Whichever way one looks at it, there seems to be a growing interdisciplinary
interest between translation studies and sociology. This interest relates, among
other things, to the role of the translator and translation in the development
of a society and the interplay between the constraints that society places on
the translator and translation praxis, on the one hand, and the activism and
resistance of the translation agency, on the other. This interest has been
reflected in Translation Studies readers, monographs, edited collections,
special editions of TS journals, and a multitude of articles. The uniqueness of
this special issue of SALALS (http://www.nisc.co.za/journals?id=9) is that it
will consider the role of translation specifically in the developmental context.

Although neither the UN or WTO or OECD suggest any definition of what a
developing country might be, the group of developed countries being "a highly
diverse group" (http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/dev1_e.htm),
the entry 'developing country' in New American Oxford Dictionary captures well
the common feature of all developing countries, that is, all of them are
"seeking to become more advanced economically and socially". Consequently, such
countries put the translator and translation in the developmental context.

The main questions to be addressed in this SALALS issue are:

What is the role of translation in social development in general and in
developing countries in particular?

What are the theoretical and methodological implications thereof?

Related questions may include (but are not limited to) the following:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/itit/message/2840

Political parties yesterday expressed mixed reactions to the announcement by ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, that one African language should be compulsory at schools, depending on the regions where the schools were situated.

In comments after a previous article I was accused of being 'xenophobic', of hating the English, being ashamed of being of Dutch descent and generally nasty towards English South Africans.

In just a few years, comedian Trevor Noah went from performing at amateur clubs to selling out large theaters in his native South Africa.

...

Noah's known for his impressions — of everyone from South African President Jacob Zuma to Oprah Winfrey — and his ability to turn mundane news stories into comedy. In 2011, he moved to California and made his big debut to American audiences with a five-minute set on The Tonight Show.

NPR's Neal Conan talks with Noah about translating his humor for different audiences.

Directory of translation agencies based in South Africa at TranslationDirectory.com...

A LIMPOPO school has banned the teaching of Xitsonga and Sepedi despite most pupils being speakers of the languages.

THE government’s constitutional obligation to ensure the equal status of official languages should see at least three languages used by government services, including public enterprises such as Eskom, Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile said on Friday.

Mr Mashatile said the use of African languages by the government was not just necessary because of constitutional obligations, but would also ensure high levels of public service to speakers of African languages.

The draft South African Languages Bill is before Parliament and aims to provide for regulation and monitoring of official language usage by the government.

National and provincial government are required to use at least two official languages.

English and Afrikaans, however, are predominant, and critics say indigenous African languages are being sidelined.

SA does not have legislation regulating language use by the government, with the Cabinet having rejected a Language Bill in 2007. The Pan South African Language Board (Pansalb), the chapter 9 institution set up to promote indigenous languages, has been criticised as dysfunctional.

However, critics say in its current form the bill is unlikely to result in government departments using more than two languages.