Ethiopia is a pretty unique country. Not only is it one of the only African nations to never be colonized, but it’s also remarkably diverse, with roughly 100 distinct languages spoken in the country. There’s no “main” language in Ethiopia—the most widely spoken native language, Oromo, accounts for a mere 33% of the population, with the second-biggest native language, Amharic, representing roughly 29% of the country. Also among the hundred-odd languages of Ethiopia are many smaller—but nonetheless important—ones, such as Harari.
Harari has about 27,000 native speakers, at least as of the 2007 Ethiopian census. The Harari population has grown significantly since then, and the number of Harari speakers has likely followed suit accordingly. However, the language is threatened by other, bigger languages in the region, particularly Oromo and Amharic, which stunts the language’s growth and represents a serious threat for its future. We at TranslationServices.com are proud to support the Harari language through our new Harari translation services, however.
If you’d like to see a free quote for our Harari translation services, why not message us today?
Discovering Harari, an important minority language of Ethiopia
Harari is, unsurprisingly, spoken in the Harari Region of Ethiopia, particularly in the city of Harar, a historical city of great cultural importance. However, even in the Harari Region, Harari is a minority language, with Oromo and Amharic accounting for the majority of inhabitants. Harari is related to both, as they all come from the Afroasiatic language family—like most languages in Ethiopia—but it’s more closely related to Amharic, a fellow member of the Semitic branch. Major languages like Arabic and Hebrew are also Semitic languages, so Harari is in good company. The language was originally written in the Arabic script, which was later replaced with a modified version of the Ge’ez script, used for Amharic. The Latin alphabet is also used by the Harari diaspora.
Harari is grammatically complicated, with grammatical gender and a complex pronoun system that includes gendered versions of “you” in the singular, as well as a gender-neutral formal “you.” Harari also has a genderless formal third-person pronoun alongside its normal, gendered equivalents of “he” and “she.” Differences like these can make Harari a tricky language to translate, necessitating the expertise of native-speaking translators—and that’s exactly who’s on our team.
Just tell us what kind of Harari translation services you’re looking for.
Our Harari translators come from all over Harar and elsewhere in the Harari Region, representing different varieties of the rich Harari language. We cover translation services in both the Ge’ez and Latin scripts, as well as historical documents in the Arabic script. Whether you’re looking for translation into Harari or from Harari, you can rely on our passionate, native-speaking Harari translators to provide meticulous translations that stay faithful to your original text—no matter the content.
Indeed, to the best of our ability, given the small speaker community of Harari, we’ve endeavored to hire a diverse range of expertise who can cater to the needs of many different clients. For academic clients, such as researchers, professors, or educators, our academic translation team works with texts of various disciplines. For business clients, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, marketers, and other business professionals, our business translators would be happy to help you translate both internal company documents and customer-facing marketing collateral. For literary clients, such as novelists, poets, screenwriters, bloggers, journalists, and other creative writers, we have a team of literary translators who can carefully translate your works to or from Harari, ensuring that your unique voice and writing style always shine through, despite all the linguistic differences between English and Harari. In short, we always try to cater to our clients’ needs—so if you need anything, just ask!
We’d love to help you with your Harari translation project. All you have to do is reach out to place your first order!