While African countries often fly under the radar of the wider world, everyone’s heard of Kenya, a large East African country blessed with a rich array of flora and fauna. The diversity isn’t limited to the animal and plant life on the land—the people of Kenya are also remarkably diverse, with Kenya home to dozens of ethnic groups who, combined, speak around 70 different languages. Among Kenya’s 55 million residents, the Kikuyu people are the most common, clocking in at more than 8 million. The second-biggest ethnic group, the Luhya people, isn’t far behind at 6 million.
The Luhya people are divided into many smaller tribes, each speaking their own dialect or language. Most Luhya people speak a dialect of the aptly named Luhya language, which may also be called Luyia, Luhia, or Luhiya, but some speak an entirely different language, such as the Bakusu tribe, who speak a dialect of Masaba. With 15 million speakers, Luhya is a major language in Kenya, big enough to amass a sizable population of non-ethnic speakers in addition to the several million ethnically Luhya speakers. But does that mean translation companies are generally willing to work with the African language? Unfortunately, no.
Here at TranslationServices.com, we do work with Luhya, and we’re proud of it. If you want to see a free quote for our Luhya translation services, simply shoot us a message.
A brief exploration of the Luhya language
Speakers of Luhya typically reside in the region affectionately known as Luhyaland, referring to the area the Luhya people initially migrated to more than 2000 years ago. Today, this area is termed “the Western region,” formerly Western Province, and is divided into four counties: Kakamega, Bungoma, Vihiga, and Busia. The region borders Uganda, which is also home to some Luhya tribes. The key dialects that constitute the Luhya language are Hanga, Tsotso, Marama, Kisa, Kabras, and East Nyala.
Like the majority of languages in Kenya, Luhya comes from the massive Bantu subfamily of the Niger–Congo macrofamily. Thus, Luhya shares the same features common to Bantu languages, including the noun class system, complicated verbal morphology, agglutination, and a subject-verb-object word order. In Luhya, as in other Bantu languages, nouns are classified into several “classes” that function similarly to grammatical gender in French or Spanish—just that there are many, many more of them in Luhya. Class agreement markers must be appended to the verbs, adjectives, demonstratives, and other words that modify a noun, making the system pervasive and all the more complex.
Our translators are eager to help you with your Luhya translation project.
While the Luhya people may be divided into several smaller tribes, their pride in their common Luhya language ties them together. We’ve scouted out the top Luhya translators from all over Kenya and Uganda, which means we can translate any Luhya dialect you may be interested in—and our translation services work in both directions. So, whether you need translation into Luhya or from Luhya, you can find what you need with our passionate Luhya translators.
What about specialty translation needs, you ask? Not to worry—we’ve made sure to hire a diverse selection of Luhya translation experts from various domains. Even if your document is jam-packed with complicated jargon, if you just let us know the niche you’re working in, we’ll look through our team to find the right Luhya translator for you. And even if your text isn’t riddled with technical terminology, we’ll still assign your project to a translator well versed in that kind of translation, whether it’s business translation, academic translation, literary translation, or localization. Books, apps, contracts, press releases, blog posts, academic papers, surveys, poems, business plans, financial reports—you name it, we can translate it to or from Luhya.
Now’s the best time to reap the benefits of Luhya translation. Dive into Luhya translation today by messaging our team.