For example, I helped a waste disposal company translate its complex emissions report into isiZulu, because the community did not trust a report that it could not understand.
Improving homegrown scientific understanding would not only boost Africans’ ability to conduct science on the continent, but also help local communities control their own destinies. The African Union has set a goal for African governments to contribute 1% of their GDP to research, in order to develop the continent. Clearly, the continent does not do enough science. African institutions contribute to less than 1% of the world’s published research, but Africa suffers the highest disease burden on Earth.
The problem of Africa’s science-language barrier is much bigger than my inability to write about dinosaurs. Science communication in local languages democratizes science The Decolonise Science project, where I am the lead science writer and “decolonisation specialist,” aims to change that - by leveraging artificial intelligence. But so far, there haven’t been enough resources or political will to adapt African languages to scientific discourse, the same way Afrikaans was adapted for science in apartheid-era South Africa.
The natural next step is to enable scientists, teachers, journalists, and science communicators to discuss and talk about science in African languages. Projects like AfricArXiv (pronounced “Africa archive”), a repository of African research by African scientists, aims to usher in an African Renaissance. In casual conversation, the Zulu language speakers of South Africa often say, “ izinto zabelungu” - literally, “a thing for the white people” - when referring to anything scientific or technological.īut now, Indigenous peoples in once-colonized African countries are engaging in their own solutions using science. The biggest journals in science are published in English, and scientists use English to communicate among themselves from across the world. I’d need to build a consensus among scientists, linguists, and translators - who understand that, globally, knowledge often begins with having the right words.Īsk anyone what the language of science is and the answer you’ll most likely get is English. I knew that I couldn’t coin this and other science terms by myself. My workaround was coming up with a new term for dinosaur, isilwane sasemandulo, which translates to “ancient animal.” While this term served its purpose in the article, I still didn’t have a bespoke term for dinosaur. The first problem was that there was no isiZulu word for “dinosaur,” or for “fossil.” I had to figure out a way to convey the scientific discovery in an African language incapable of talking about science. A few years ago, I got an assignment to write an article about a new dinosaur discovery in South Africa - for a science website that publishes in my native language of isiZulu.
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