When you think about what languages are spoken in Africa, you might think of English, French, Arabic, and Swahili. It’s true that these languages are widely spoken across the vast continent, Arabic natively across North Africa and the others as lingua francas in various sub-Saharan African nations. But there’s so much more to Africa’s linguistic landscape than that. For one thing, some countries, like Mozambique, use Portuguese as their lingua franca. And for another, Africa is brimming with indigenous languages, with most people in sub-Saharan Africa speaking the local language of their community—leading to countries with dozens or even hundreds of different languages.
Ronga is one of the estimated 2000 languages spoken in Africa. Specifically, it’s spoken in Mozambique and South Africa by around 720,000 people in the eastern African region, making it a relatively prominent language in the area. Of course, Ronga speakers in Mozambique learn Portuguese, which is used in education, administration, and the media, but at home, they speak their native Ronga. Unfortunately, this proud African language is underrepresented by translation agencies, with few offering Ronga translation services. But we at TranslationServices.com do offer Ronga translation services, and we’re proud of it.
Are you interested in our Ronga translation services? Why not send us a message asking about a free quote?
Understanding what Ronga is like
Ronga is native to southern Mozambique, specifically the region around the national capital of Maputo, though not actually in Maputo itself. It’s also spoken natively in South Africa. Ronga includes the notable dialects of Konde, Putru, and Kalanga, but interestingly, some people consider Ronga itself to be a dialect of Tsonga, a major southeastern African language with more than 7 million speakers. Perhaps the most notable difference between Ronga and Tsonga is the heavy Portuguese influence the former has sustained due to its close proximity to Maputo, the heart of Portuguese Mozambique.
Ronga is related not just to Tsonga but to most of the languages in sub-Saharan Africa, albeit much more distantly. It’s a member of the expansive Bantu language family, which means it contains the infamous Bantu noun class system that’s extremely difficult for learners to grasp. In Ronga, as in other Bantu languages, nouns are assigned classes, similar to grammatical genders, based on their syntactical qualities, although the associations can be quite loose. Each class is associated with a specific prefix or particle, which is then added to any word that modifies the noun—verbs, adjectives, demonstratives, and more. With this pervasive and convoluted grammar system, it takes a true professional to translate Ronga effectively.
Our Ronga translators are eager to work with you.
To bring you the best Ronga translation services we can, we’ve worked hard to find the best Ronga translators—across Mozambique as well as in neighboring South Africa. We’ve made sure to cover all the dialects, including Konde, Putru, and Kalanga, to ensure we can accommodate your unique translation needs. And since we translate both from English to Ronga and from Ronga to English, we can help both clients in Mozambique and South Africa as well as those from all over the world.
What if your content is highly technical or contains a lot of jargon? That could certainly trip up the average translator, but we’ve been careful to hire translators who are experts in a variety of other fields. That means that all you have to do is tell us you want a translator familiar with your field, and we’ll search through our roster of Ronga translators to match you with the right professional. Our Ronga translation services are available for businesspeople, academics, researchers, authors, software developers, and anyone else who may need professional Ronga translation services—we provide high-quality, reliable Ronga translations for everyone.
You can get started with Ronga translation services immediately. It’s as simple as sending us a message explaining your translation needs!