You might think that the linguistic landscape in Indonesia is dominated entirely by the Indonesian language, but in fact, Indonesia is the second-most linguistically diverse country on Earth, with more than 700 indigenous languages spanning its many islands. Of course, the population is broadly united under Indonesian, which is used in education, administration, and media, but at home, Indonesians usually speak a local language as their native tongue. For some 300,000 Indonesians, that language is Sumbawa.
Sumbawa is not to be confused with Sumba, one of the many other indigenous Indonesian languages. Despite the similarity in name and being spoken in a similar area, Sumbawa and Sumba are only distantly related. Sumbawa is used vigorously in its communities, and even though Indonesian may take precedence in more formal situations, Sumbawa is used in daily conversation even among political, social, and business elites. The language is also learned by minority ethnic groups in the region, functioning as a local lingua franca. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find translation services for Sumbawa—in fact, it can be challenging. That’s why we at TranslationServices.com have launched our own Sumbawa translation services.
Send our team a message today if you’d like to see a free quote for our Sumbawa translation services.
Understanding the background of Sumbawa
If you want to meet native Sumbawa speakers, you’ll have to venture to the Lesser Sunda Islands chain in southern Indonesia, to the east of Java. Sumbawa is spoken on the western half of the island of Sumbawa, with Bima spoken in the eastern portion of the island. Together with the neighboring island of Lombok, the island forms the province of West Nusa Tenggara. The Sumbawa language bears a close resemblance to Sasak, the language spoken on Lombok, as well as Balinese, the language of Bali. Together, they form their own branch within the Malayo–Polynesian languages of the Austronesian language family.
Grammatically, Sumbawa is most similar to Sasak. The language features a highly flexible word order, with subject-verb-object, verb-subject-object, and object-subject-verb all occurring frequently. In its pronouns, Sumbawa features a distinction between a version of “we” that includes the listener and another that excludes them, adding nuance that doesn’t exist in English. Like other nearby languages, such as Sasak, Balinese, and Javanese, Sumbawa also uses a number of speech levels, where speakers use different vocabulary depending on the social status of the listener relative to the speaker. This can be difficult to translate to and from a more hierarchically flat language like English, but don’t worry—that’s why we’ve hired native-speaking Sumbawa translators.
Sumbawa translation services for different needs
We’re passionate about providing the highest-quality Sumbawa translation services to our clients from across Indonesia and the world. To this end, we’ve scoured the western half of Sumbawa, consisting of Sumbawa Regency and West Sumbawa Regency, to find the best Sumbawa translators we possibly can. Our translators speak various dialects of Sumbawa, so whatever kind of Sumbawa translation you’re looking for, we’re here to provide it. This applies whether you want to translate into Sumbawa or from Sumbawa.
If there’s a special type of Sumbawa translation services you’d like, just let us know. With a team as large and diverse as ours, it’s easy to find specialists in different areas of translation, catering to clients in the academic, business, and literary worlds and beyond. We can even offer localization services for software, apps, and games! So, don’t hesitate to send your academic journal article, research survey, business plans, press release, novel manuscript, blog post, or anything else to our Sumbawa translation team—we’re here to help!
If you want to get started with Sumbawa translation services, simply contact us and place an order today!