There are around 7000 unique languages spoken around the world, with over 2000 of them found in Africa. While most African countries use English, French, Arabic, or Portuguese to tie together their diverse populations, the majority of Africans speak an indigenous language as their mother tongue, learning these lingua francas as a second language. One of the larger languages on the continent is Dinka, hailing from Sudan and South Sudan.
Dinka is spoken as a native language by some 1.3 million Dinka people, who reside primarily in Sudan and South Sudan. In fact, the Dinka people constitute the largest ethnic group in South Sudan. Thanks to a sizable community of second-language speakers, Dinka boasts a total speaker count of roughly 4.5 million people. It’s the biggest indigenous language in South Sudan, with the closely related Nuer in second place. Despite this, Dinka (and Nuer) must compete with English, the only official language of the country, widely learned for easy communication across all ethnic groups. With professional translation services for Dinka scarce, we at TranslationServices.com decided to be the solution with our own Dinka translation team.
We’re happy to offer free quotes for our Dinka translation services to anyone who requests one!
Dinka: a major Nilo–Saharan language
Dinka speakers are concentrated along the west coast of the White Nile, specifically in the Sudanese state of South Kordofan, the South Sudanese state of Upper Nile, and the South Sudanese region of Bahr el Ghazal. Like most other indigenous languages in South Sudan, Dinka belongs to the Nilo–Saharan family, which stretches from Niger to Tanzania. Dinka is written in the Latin alphabet, albeit with some extra letters, such as ɣ.
Dinka is a tricky language for native English speakers, given the vast differences between the languages. The default word order is subject-verb-object—that’s the same. But other features, such as appending possession markers directly onto a noun to express who owns it, make Dinka vastly different. The language also uses numerous strategies to create plural nouns, including changing the vowel, much like irregular English nouns like goose/geese. Pronouns come in multiple forms—the regular form and the shortened form—and the shortened forms are integrated into the tense particles to create pronouns that also mark tense. Only these tense-marking auxiliaries change form—the main verb in a sentence, which follows the tense particle, generally doesn’t change.
We’re passionate about translating between Dinka and English—despite the difficulties
Reading the above, you might feel intimidated by Dinka. It’s certainly not an easy language, but our Dinka translation is staffed with native speakers of this proud African language. They’re eager to translate both to and from Dinka, passionate about sharing their culture with the broader world and bringing interesting and useful new content to the Dinka people.
If you have Dinka content you want translated into English—be it historical texts, traditional literature, contemporary business documents, or anything else, just send it to our team. If you want to make English-language content accessible to the Dinka people in their own language, we can handle that as well—from promotional business materials and pedagogical content for Dinka children to books, poems, games, websites, apps, and other entertainment content that helps keep Dinka a proud and vibrant language, we can translate just about anything into Dinka.
Don’t wait to get started with Dinka translation services! All you have to do is message us and let us know what you need.