We are happy to announce that Amharic is now available to use in the Care to Translate app. Amharic has been widely requested and we’re proud to now support healthcare providers in yet another language.
2024-10-28
News
Amharic is the largest and most widely spoken language in Ethiopia, also serving as a lingua franca. As of 2020, it had almost 34 million mother-tongue speakers and more than 25 million second language speakers.
“Amharic is the second largest language in the semitic language family, after Arabic.” says Maja Britse, Linguistic Assistant at Care to Translate. “It’s also the first language of the Amharas, an ethnic group, and mainly spoken in Ethiopia.”
One unique feature of Amharic is its script, differentiating it from the Latin alphabet. The writing system, known as Fidäl (meaning “script”, “letter” or “character”), consists of 34 characters with seven variations, depending on which vowel sound is pronounced in the syllable.
“The writing system is a modification of the Ge'ez script.” Maja Britse explains. “It’s a system where each grapheme (symbol) represents syllables. So a consonant and a vowel make up one unit. This is called an abugida system.”
In Amharic, formality is taken into consideration when addressing other people. And this, of course, impacts translation as well.
“When translating to Amharic, one often has to consider that formality is an important feature.” Maja points out.
“And therefore, we have to be cautious of how we translate words like “poop” and “vagina” so that it’s not translated to a rude word. Or that it’s too vaguely translated. This’s always important with translations. One has to consider the context and culture in which the language is spoken so that you get the nuances of the linguistic content right. This is often referred to as localization in translation contexts.”
It is estimated that around 3 million people outside of Ethiopia speak Amharic. Among others, Sweden, UK, Italy and Canada host large Ethiopian populations, increasing the interest of Amharic in those countries.
“Amharic has been one of our most requested languages.” says Maja.
“Largely by customers in Sweden and Norway. So naturally it was on the top of our priority list to add to the app. And we hope it will help combat language barriers for even more healthcare providers.”
Fun fact, Amharic is considered holy by the Rastafari religion and is spoken by their followers across the globe.
Is your healthcare organization in need of translation assistance in Amharic? Book a demo and we’ll showcase how you can use Care to Translate to talk to all Amharic-speaking patients.
Source: Wikipedia
