Metaglossia: The Translation World

DOCUMENT

It's my great pleasure to attend the joint conference of Confucius Institutes in Africa. As we have today in the audience many outstanding figures, both old and young, I wish to quote what Confucius said, that "when you have friends coming from afar, isn't that a great pleasure"!

All the officials, teachers and friends gather here have long been committed to Chinese language teaching and promotion in China and African countries and you are all witnesses of the success of Confucius Institutes in Africa. Today, we come to draw the blueprint for future development of Confucius Institutes in this Continent. Please allow me to express, on behalf of the Chinese Embassy, our heartfelt congratulations on the opening of this conference, and our warmest welcome to everyone of you, officials, teachers and friends from afar. Welcome to the beautiful country of South Africa!

La Chine a annoncé jeudi 19 juillet un doublement de ses crédits à l'Afrique, ce qui les porte à 20 milliards de dollars, pour les trois années à venir.

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20 milliards de crédits à l'Afrique sur trois ans, c'est le double de ce que l'Afrique recevait jusque-là. Un geste attendu et une enveloppe qui reflète la montée en puissance des engagements chinois en Afrique. Ces chiffres en disent plus long qu’un discours. Depuis trois ans, la Chine est le premier partenaire commercial de l’Afrique avec un nouveau record atteint l’an dernier pour un volume d’échange de 166 milliards de dollars. La Chine a contribué à former 40 000 africains. 2 000 entreprises chinoises étaient installées sur le continent fin 2011 et 29 Instituts Confucius sont aujourd’hui présents dans une vingtaine de pays. Voilà le bilan.

Pour l’avenir, le chef de l’Etat chinois s’est engagé à envoyer 1500 personnels médicaux sur le continent et à attribuer des bourses à 18 000 étudiants. Ce partenariat est l’un des meilleurs exemples de réussites de la coopération sud-sud, s’est félicité pour sa part le secrétaire général des Nations unies Ban Ki-moon.

Shen Yuning is a lexicographer working on a Chinese-Swahili dictionary. He is currently studying African languages and cultures at the University of Hamburg and lives in Tanzania. Completing a comprehensive dictionary can be a tedious task, but Shen sees it as “a small personal initiative for translating knowledge.” Below he answers questions from Danwei on his project:

Can you tell us your education history?

After completing high school education at Nanjing Foreign Languages School I enrolled for the BA Program “German language and literature” at the Sun Yat-Sen University. After I graduated in 2008, I joined University of Hamburg where I currently study my second BA degree in “African languages and Cultures”.

Where has your journey in Africa taken you, where have you been?

I have been in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Swahili language expands over which countries in Africa?

Swahili is the official language in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and one of the national languages of DR Congo. Its dialect serves as the official language of Comoro Islands. Swahili is the most important vehicle language in East Africa. In Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Zambia and Somalia we also can find more or less Swahili speakers. Swahili is also one of the working languages of AU.

When did you decide you wanted to take on the task of writing a Swahili-Chinese dictionary?

Read more: http://www.danwei.com/the-chinese-swahili-dictionary-project/