South Africa is regarded as a
multicultural and multilingual country with eleven official languages. A lot
has been done by the government through legislation and the establishment of
the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) in order to promote local
languages. Yet even more can still be done to promote and use all the languages.
Equal use of the official languages does not imply every public notice or
sign in eleven languages, yet in some cases this might be necessary. Luckily
due to the fact that some languages are related some terms are similar as
with this stop sign (right). The following has been used: "stop" from
Afrikaans and English; "jama" from isiNdebele; "tshitopo" from Tshivenda; "yima"
from isiZulu, isiXhosa and Xitsonga; "ema" from Sesotho, Sesotho sa Leboa
(Northern Sotho) and Setswana; and "mani" from siSwati.
Multilingualism has not caught on to this degree and in general translations
are only made where there is a real need. Hopefully this site can help.
