Did you know that there are over 30 million Portuguese speakers on the African continent! Well, 14 million is the number of those who have Portuguese as their mother tongue or first language while the rest have it as second or third language and because of the many indigenous languages spoken in countries where Portuguese is, African Portuguese Translation is vital for purposes of effective communication.
This was as a result of King John the 1st wanting to access West Africa so as to get hold of the gold there. Some of the African countries currently speaking Portuguese happen to be former colonies of the Spanish and retained the language as a mother tongue for most born after colonization and also as an official language. The official status of the language is visible in government instituions, schools to mention a few and such countries include;
Then there are countries where Portuguese is spoken as a result of the speakers fleeing from their countries of origin as a result of civil wars and thus continued to use their language of origin in their new host countries. Such people now live in the Southern parts of the African continent and they include Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, and Senegal to mention a few. There is a new member of the Portuguese speaking African countries and this is Guinea Bissau.
Portuguese speaking countries in Africa are fewer than the English and French speaking countries and therefore translation services are crucial for effective communication between these countries to take place. Africa Portuguese Translation is important in both the Portuguese speaking countries and for these countries with others.
The reason is that the Portuguese African countries have got several indigenous languages which makes communication a bit hard between people of different indigenous languages. There is therefore a need to translate from Portuguese to the indigenous languages and from indigenous languages to Portuguese.
Then there is the need to carry out translations from African Portuguese to languages outside the Portuguese speaking countries both in Africa and other countries outside Africa.
At some point it seems like African Portuguese is into an invisible battle with English and French because the former is spoken by a few countries compared to the other two languages. Therefore the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa are working hard to preserve the Portuguese culture and this is already seen in many songs by African artists singing African Portuguese.
By Angela Kyolaba
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