Swahili Voice Over Agency

Working with translation and production companies

Adding audio visual services to your mix will create many new sales opportunities for your team.

Matinée has over 40 years of experience working alongside translation and production companies. So you can be sure our project managers are fully at home with the technical process of supervising and delivering localised material, in a professional and timely manner. We can add translation, voiceover and subtitling to your company’s offering, which will appear seamless to your clients and yet mesh easily with the processes in your own departments.

If you are a translation company, we will send you some helpful guidelines when providing us with copy or scripts, and we can either work from your translations or handle the whole project for you, including translation. If you are a production company, we will provide translations or subtitles in your preferred format; whether that’s subtitle-ready files (XML or PNG), or burnt in as fully-subtitled videos. Voiceover recordings can be supplied as edited files, or we can remix with the original music and effects and provide a finished video, ready to go.

Working seamlessly with your team, we can take on all or part of the process, according to your needs, and help widen your service offering.

A short history on the Swahili language

Swahili (or Kiswahili) belongs to the Bantu sub-group of the Atlantic-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family of languages. It is spoken widely in East and Central Africa.

The spread of the language along the Swahili Coast is believed to date back to at least the 6th century. The earliest written examples of Swahili are thought to be some letters sent from the Kilwa region to the Portuguese in Mozambique in 1711. The epic Swahili poem, ‘Utendi wa Tambuka’ (history of Tambuka), dates back to 1728 and is written using the Arabic script.

Swahili has been greatly influenced by Arabic from centuries of trade and settlement along the east coast of Africa. It is estimated that around 35% of Swahili vocabulary derives from Arabic. Colonisation by, and trade with, other countries has also had an impact on the development of Swahili, with words borrowed from English, German, French and Hindi.

When Germany colonised present-day Tanzania in 1886, Swahili was designated as the official administrative language, and this policy was later adopted by Britain throughout its East African colonies. The standard version of Swahili was established in 1928, based on the Zanzibar dialect.

Which countries have Swahili as a national language?

Swahili is an official language in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda (along with English in all three countries). In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Swahili is one of four national languages (French is the official language).

Swahili is one of the official languages of the African Union.

How many people speak Swahili as their first language?

It is estimated that approximately five million people speak Swahili as their first language. However, it is commonly spoken as a second or third language (it is the second most widely used language in Africa, after Arabic), and the total number of speakers is around 140 million.

As well as Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, other countries with large Swahili-speaking populations include Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Did you know…

• There are around 15 main Swahili dialects – the major ones are Kiunguia (spoken on Zanzibar and mainland areas of Tanzania, and the basis for standard Swahili), Kimvita (spoken in parts of Kenya) and Kiamu (spoken on the island of Lamu).
• The name Kiswahili comes from the Arabic word ‘sawāhili’ which, used as an adjective, means ‘coastal dwellers’. The ‘ki-’ at the beginning gives it the meaning ‘coastal language’.
• Swahili words that have been borrowed from English include baiskeli (bicycle), basi (bus), penseli (pencil), mashine (machine) and koti (coat).

The East African economy

Here is a summary of three of the main Swahili-speaking countries’ economies:

Tanzania – although Tanzania is one of the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita income, tourism and gold production have contributed to high overall growth rates. The agriculture sector employs 80% of the workforce and accounts for 85% of exports.

Kenya – Kenya has East Africa’s largest economy, and is the region’s hub for finance, communication and transport. It has a comparatively well-developed social and physical infrastructure, and is a popular choice for businesses wishing to enter the African market.

Uganda – another one of the world’s poorest countries, Uganda does, however, have potential for rapid economic growth due to its wealth of natural resources (fertile land, oil and mineral deposits). Around 80% of the workforce is employed in agriculture.