Building bridges in Africa

The South Aftican Translators’ Institute (SATI) is a voluntary professional translation association. Since it was founded, in 1956, it has been promoting and defending translation, interpreting and related language professions.

SATI was created in Johannesburg by a small group of people. The 18 that started it saw the country go through a lot of well known changes, as the translators association expanded to around 800 members, nowadays.

In the beginning, the official goal was “to give the translator professional status and pride and to ensure an honourable position for the translation profession among the other professions”.

These days, SATI has a list of goals, defined in their constitution. Above all, they wish to support translators and related professionals, always safeguarding their interests. Other goals include research and making the respective results available, establishing partnerships with higher education institutions and other organisations or collecting fund to achieve the objectives.

One of SATI’s main intentions is also “to implement a comprehensive system of accreditation with a view to ascertaining members’ competence in the fields of translation, interpreting, text editing and terminology”. They also make compilations which may help professionals in the above-mentioned subjects.

The motto of this organisation is “Per interpretes pons conditur” (“A bridge built by translators”). Therefore, they are committed to help unite peoples and groups, bearing in mind the importance of effective communication, particularly in nowadays’ ever-changing world.

Keep in mind that South Africa has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. Dutch used to be a part of the group but it was dropped in 1961, being replaced by Afrikaans. Even though it’s the main language, featured in all government documents, English is only the 6th most spoken tongue. Zulu has the highest percentage and is spoken by over 10 million South Africans.

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