English, French, and Arabic may be the most widely spoken languages in Africa, but for most Africans, those aren’t their native languages. Arabic is indeed the majority native language in most countries of North Africa, but once you go just a little south to Chad or Sudan, it’s already a second language for most people. Most inhabitants of Chad and Sudan speak one of the dozens or even hundreds of languages native to the country, learning Arabic, English, or French for education, business, official, or communicative purposes. One of those indigenous languages—a relatively big one—is Tama.
According to Ethnologue data from 2022 and 2023, there are around 460,000 native speakers of Tama in the world, accounting for virtually the entire ethnic population. As the number of Tama people has increased over the years, so too has the number of Tama speakers. The language is not considered immediately endangered because of its strong footing in its community, but it remains true that Arabic, English, and French are important facets of life in Chad and Sudan and pose an ever-looming threat. At TranslationServices.com, we’re excited to introduce our new translation services for Tama, a language that’s usually overlooked by translation agencies.
If you send us a message requesting a free quote for our Tama translation services, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
A quick overview of the Tama language
Tama, which you may also hear called Tamongobo, is spoken by the ethnic Tama people as well as some Kimr people, with whom the Tama intermarry. Tama speakers are concentrated along the Chad–Sudan border, inhabiting the Wadi Fira region of Chad and the West Darfur and South Darfur regions of Sudan. The language features a number of dialects, including Tama proper, Orra, Girga, Haura, Erenga, Murase, Mileere, and Madungore, as well as Miisiirii, which is sometimes considered a dialect and sometimes considered a separate language.
Grammatically, Tama is a complex language. It belongs to the Nilo–Saharan language family, but it features a noun class system, which is the hallmark feature of many Niger–Congo languages, the other major language family indigenous to Africa. Tama also uses a subject-object-verb word order, which is not common in either family. It marks plurals with suffixes, but the suffix depends on the noun class, leading to a dizzying system that makes Tama difficult to learn. Luckily, you don’t have to, because our native-speaking Tama translators can expertly translate to and from the language.
Specialized Tama translation services for any occasion
Tama covers a lot of different dialects, but so do we. We’ve tried our best to build a diverse, robust team of Tama translators who are native speakers of different dialects of the language, allowing our varied clients to access the precise variety of Tama that they’re looking for. Whether you’re looking to translate an English-language text into Tama or a Tama-language text into English, you can request the specific dialect or region of your translator, and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.
Sometimes, clients may require more specialized translation services, such as academic translation services, business translation services, or literary translation services. With Tama being a minority language from a developing part of Africa, we can’t necessarily guarantee we can cater to niche needs, but we’ll always do our best to find the translator who best suits your needs. If you’re a researcher who needs to connect with Tama-speaking locals, a business leader looking to cater to the local populace, or a creative writer who wants to share your stories or poems with a whole new audience, let our Tama translators help, for any discipline, industry, or genre.
We have a team of Tama translators ready to help you—so send a message now to put them to work!