Marnie Chesterton

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.

Ah, that makes sense.

Also, if they can translate them and make them more readable, that would be an added bonus.

Because science papers are notoriously... they're not a page-turner.

Phyllis, have you ever wished that science papers were translated, I don't know, into one, readable English, or two, even better, readable Swahili?

I would prefer English because the Swahili that I've tried...

It's very wordy, not interesting at all.