Indonesia has no mainland—the entire country is a collection of major islands in Southeast Asia, each with dramatically different ethnic groups, cultures, and languages. Sulawesi, a major island located smack-dab in the center of Indonesia, is remarkably ethnolinguistically diverse, with 114 indigenous languages spoken among its 17 million inhabitants. While the biggest languages are Buginese and Makassarese, Toraja-Sa’dan is one of the biggest, boasting 750,000 speakers.
Toraja-Sa’dan is one of the languages of the Toraja people, who reside in the northern part of the province of South Sulawesi. Coming from the Toraja grouping of languages, Toraja-Sa’dan resembles its neighboring languages in various ways, emerging as the most widely spoken Toraja language. With relatively high language vitality, Toraja Sa’dan is still vigorously used in daily life, with elementary schools even teaching the language. But the Toraja people still need to learn Indonesian to communicate with people outside the Toraja-Sa’dan-speaking community, and this puts Toraja-Sa’dan at risk. It also means there aren’t a lot of translation services available for the language. One of the only options is our new Toraja-Sa’dan translation, which we at TranslationServices.com proudly present.
Free quotes for our Toraja-Sa’dan translation services are available. Reach out today and ask for one.
Introducing the Toraja-Sa’dan language
Toraja-Sa’dan speakers can be found in abundance in northern South Sulawesi, specifically in Tana Toraja Regency and North Toraja Regency. The Toraja people are proud of their language, which exhibits differences from other languages in Indonesia despite belonging to the same language family as most of its neighbors. Indeed, Toraja-Sa’dan is part of the vast Malayo–Polynesian language branch of the Austronesian family, which stretches all across Indonesia all the way to Hawaii and Easter Island. The Toraja people have adopted the Latin alphabet to write their language, like most of their neighbors.
A notable feature of Toraja is its ergative alignment. Ergative languages focus on who or what is affected by an action rather than who or what is performing it, like English, meaning that intransitive subjects and transitive objects are marked the same. Toraja marks these grammatical relationships through verbal clitics, appearing before the verb to mark the ergative (transitive subjects) and after the verb to mark the absolutive (intransitive subjects and transitive objects). With honorifics and a clusivity distinction in the first-person plural that indicates whether the listener is included, these markers can get complicated.
We’re ready to provide Toraja-Sa’dan translation services for you.
You might think that Toraja-Sa’dan sounds difficult—but fortunately, our translators are native speakers, so they’re well versed in the complexities of the language. So, whether you need translation from Toraja-Sa’dan or into Toraja-Sa’dan, we have the knowledge and skills to help you. Our translators are passionate about a wide range of translation applications, from translating historical Toraja-Sa’dan documents into English or translating research surveys into the language. We’d also be happy to translate traditional (or contemporary) Toraja-Sa’dan literature into English, allowing it to spread abroad, as well as English-language content like books, poems, websites, games, and apps into Toraja-Sa’dan, which is an excellent way to encourage increased use and positive attitudes toward the language, helping ensure its future vitality.
What kind of Toraja-Sa’dan translation services are you envisioning? Get in touch today to discuss your needs.