Malawi usually isn’t the first country that comes to mind when one thinks of Africa. In fact, many people have never even heard of the small Southeast African nation. So it may come as a surprise that Malawi is home to nearly 20 million people, more than the Netherlands. Like most African countries, Malawi boasts a diverse array of indigenous languages, and English is often used as a lingua franca for interethnic communication. But Chichewa is considered the unofficial national language of the country, and it’s the native language of more than half the population.
Chichewa (also called Chewa) is spoken by around 12 million people, the majority of whom live in Malawi and Zambia, although smaller communities can also be found in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Chichewa is the language of instruction at public elementary schools, making it an important language within Malawian borders. However, despite its prominence, Chichewa struggles for international recognition, with professional translation services for the African language remaining limited. Here at TranslationServices.com, we decided to make our own Chichewa translation team to address this gap in the market.
Anyone who wants a free quote for our Chichewa translation services is invited to reach out and request one.
Discovering Chichewa, the de facto national language of Malawi
Chichewa is the language of the Chewa people, who are native primarily to Malawi and Zambia. The language may also be called Chinyanja, as this was the previous name before a name change to Chichewa was ordered by the president in 1968. Chichewa is written in the Latin alphabet, although a native African script called Mwangwego was developed for Chichewa and other Malawian languages in the 1970s. Chichewa belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo language family, making it related to Swahili.
Chichewa is a highly agglutinative language, like other Bantu languages, and is most closely related to Tumbuka, Sena, and Nsenga. Chichewa nouns are classified into several noun classes, each taking a different plural form as well as dictating the forms that adjectives, demonstratives, and other modifiers of the noun will take. Verbs also take markers for the subject and object as determined by the class of the noun. In addition, Chichewa verbs are jam-packed with morphemes indicating tense, aspect, modality, and even dependent clauses, creating the meanings of “when,” “if,” “before,” “after,” and more.
Turn to us for all your Chichewa translation needs—either to or from the language.
Even if the Chichewa noun class system is enough to make a learner’s head spin, it’s second nature for our Chichewa translators, who have been speaking this proud African language since birth. We’ve searched all across Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe for the top Chichewa translators skilled in translating both to and from their language, which allows us to bring these high-quality Chichewa translation services to you. Clients who need to translate historical documents, traditional or contemporary literature, business materials, or educational content from Chichewa to English should reach out to our team. Similarly, anyone looking for translation into Chichewa—whether for promotional materials, pedagogical content, books, websites, games, apps, or anything else—can find a skilled and passionate translator for the job on our team.
We’re eager to help you with your Chichewa translation project. Just send us a message today to get started.