Situated right in the heart of Central Africa, straddling the equator, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a much bigger country that it’s often given credit for. Spanning more than 2.3 million square kilometers and housing a population of more than 100 million, it’s one of the biggest countries in the world in both senses of the word, and it’s one of the most linguistically diverse, too. In fact, more than 240 different languages are spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, most of them coming from the expansive Bantu language family. One of the most prominent is Tshiluba.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has designated French as its official language, alongside four recognized national languages: Kituba, Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba. We proudly offer translation services for all four, with Tshiluba constituting the newest addition to our ever-expanding selection of languages. Tshiluba boasts more than 6.3 million speakers, and it’s the dominant everyday language in the southern-central part of the country where it’s spoken. Since Tshiluba speakers receive instruction in French at school, French vocabulary has weaved its way into the language, undermining Tshiluba and restricting its access to resources, such as translation services.
Though translation services for Tshiluba aren’t common, we at TranslationServices.com have vowed to provide Tshiluba speakers with high-quality translation services. We’ll happily provide a free quote if you just ask!
A closer investigation of Tshiluba
So, where exactly is Tshiluba spoken, anyway? The prominent language is native to the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is split up into Kasaï-Occidental and Kasaï-Oriental. It’s known under different names, including Luba-Kasai and Luba-Lulua, representing the two primary ethnic groups that speak Tshiluba: the Luba people and the Lulua people. An extremely similar language, known as Luba-Katanga, is spoken in the neighboring Katanga region of the country.
Tshiluba is similar to other languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in that it comes from the Bantu subfamily. Whereas French, the country’s lingua franca, features two grammatical genders, Tshiluba and its hundreds of Bantu cousins incorporate more than a dozen genders, known as noun classes. Nouns are generally categorized into noun classes by their syntactic meaning, but the lines can be blurry, requiring a good deal of memorization to use the right class. Prefixes associated with each class are then appended to any word that modifies a noun: verbs, adjectives, demonstratives, and more. Indeed, Tshiluba is a tricky language, and it takes a true professional to translate it accurately.
Rely on our team of Tshiluba translators to get the job done right
Considering that their language is designated as one of the national languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tshiluba speakers have a lot of reason to be proud of their language. When we scoured the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in search of the top Tshiluba translators, we made sure to select those who demonstrated a shining passion for their language, which pushes them to put extra care into their translation work. This passion remains regardless of whether our team members are translating into Tshiluba or from Tshiluba, as we proudly offer both services.
We built our team specifically to accommodate the diverse needs of clients who may be interested our Tshiluba translation services, ranging from those in the business sector, to those in the academic world, to those in the creative sphere. We’ve hired Tshiluba translators who specialize in each of these areas, ensuring you can get the tailored translation services you need. And if your subject matter is highly technical, with jargon sprinkled without, don’t worry. We’ve even hired translators who are experts in various fields, allowing us to easily translate esoteric material to and from Tshiluba.
You can get started with our Tshiluba translation services today! Just send us a message and let our team know what you’re looking for.