While most African nations have designated English, French, Arabic, or Portuguese as their official language, using the imported tongue in government, education, and media and as a lingua franca to bind their ethnolinguistically diverse populations together, the reality is that Africa is a wealth of linguistic diversity, with more than a dozen languages, sometimes even hundreds, spoken indigenously in nearly every African country. With the modern-day borders in Africa generally having been conceived by European colonists with little regard for the ethnic makeup of the lands, languages also tend to extend beyond national borders, as is the case with Dyula.
Dyula, which may also be called Dioula or Jula, is a major indigenous African language spoken by more than 6.8 million people, with an additional 10 million or so learning it as a second language. Dyula’s status as a trade language is what draws all the learners, giving Dyula a good level of local prestige in West Africa. With around 60% of the Ivorians and 35% of Burkinabe claiming at least some knowledge of the language, Dyula exerts major influence over the area, but still, most translation agencies are hesitant to work with the often overlooked African language. Not us here at TranslationServices.com.
If you want Dyula translation services, you can find them with us. You can even see a free quote if you request one!
Dyula: an important trade language in West Africa
The majority of Dyula speakers can be found in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Mali, although smaller speaker communities are also scattered throughout Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Ghana. Originally, “Dyula” didn’t refer to a particular ethnic group but was rather used to distinguish the Muslim traders from the agricultural Senufo peoples who also populated the area. Some Senufo languages are still widely spoken today, though not nearly to the extent of Dyula, which has even more non-native speakers than native speakers.
Dyula comes from the Mande branch of the extensive Niger–Congo language family. Mande languages are prominent in West Africa, with such big names as Mandinka, Bambara (Bamanankan), and Mende gracing the family. They demonstrate significant deviation from other Niger–Congo languages not only in their subject-object-verb default word order, differing from the typical Niger–Congo subject-verb-object order, but also in the absence of the convoluted noun class system that Niger–Congo languages, and especially Bantu languages, are so famous for. Dyula can be written both in the Latin alphabet and the N’Ko script, a native writing system designed specifically for Mande languages, but the Latin alphabet is more common.
A diverse and flexible Dyula translation team ready to serve you
Our Dyula translators are native speakers of this important Mande language, having grown up in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, or Ghana, and they harbor a burning passion for their language. With Dyula used as a trade language in the region, there are many reasons someone may require Dyula translation services, and we’re committed to providing flexible translation services for as many needs as possible, whether you want translation into or from Dyula.
If you’re looking to open a business in the region, translation of your marketing collateral and internal business documents into Dyula is a good idea, and our business translation specialists can handle this for you. Similarly, we can also translate your business materials from Dyula, if you’re a local business owner looking to expand abroad. As for academic translation, our Dyula translators help local scholars spread their work globally with tailored translation services—we’ll match your order to a translator familiar with your field. In the opposite direction, we can help researchers translate surveys and questionnaires into Dyula to work with the local population. We also offer literary translation and localization, so if you want to share Dyula stories with the rest of the world or make your new app accessible to this West African Mande population, we’re here to help.
Would you like Dyula translation services? Get started today by contacting us!