Marnie Chesterton

It's just translated the same way.

So the word is impenzi, which also means lover.

But, you know, soulmate is deeper and you want to go deeper, but then you can't.

Oh, language fails.

How unromantic of Swahili.

But maybe it can come up trumps when it comes to science.

Tristan, tell us about how science language is being adopted by 2000 African languages.

A lot of the translation work that's happening here has to do with like STEM education.

So a lot of research seems to confirm that students perform better when taught mathematics, for example, in like their home language.

Patient care is a big motivator for this push to cancer, for instance, translates to a devouring wound in the German language.

Well,

Radiotherapy is frequently translated using concepts like being burned by fire or being roasted.

So researchers say that if terminology contributes to fear, then it creates barriers to care.

I mean, as someone who's had radiotherapy, it's not that far off.

It's a little bit roasty, but that's fascinating.

So what's being done about it?

Well, as you might imagine, there are a few groups around the continent working on this.

One fairly substantive group is Masakane, which works primarily with technology and translation.

So they're trying to build tools so that online translators and language models include African languages.

They also run a project called Decolonize Science, which is aiming to translate the abstracts of African research papers so that they are available in indigenous languages.