The Linguist

14 The Linguist Vol/65 No/3 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES Christian Elongue proposes five actions to professionalise the continent's language industry, improving pay and conditions A legal notice translated from French into Medumba for a courtroom in Dschang. A field interview interpreted from Kanuri into English on the Chad-Nigeria border. A vaccine leaflet rendered in Twi for a rural clinic in the Ashanti Region. In each case, the work is specialised and high stakes. It is often the only bridge between a citizen and a system that decides their rights, their health or their freedom. In each case, the translator is likely paid a fraction of what a comparable European-language professional earns. The problem is not a lack of work. Demand for African-language work has grown steadily as multilateral agencies, governments and technology companies push localisation in Indigenous languages. What Africa's language sector lacks is infrastructure: the procurement standards, certification systems and collective bargaining structures that give other language markets their pricing power. That is a design failure, not a talent shortage, and design failures can be corrected. What the data show Global pricing data put African languages at the premium end of the market, on par with or above many European language pairs at $0.10-$0.45 per word. This reflects the scarcity of qualified practitioners. But that sum rarely reaches the translator doing the work. Much is captured by agencies, while direct institutional buyers, government ministries, NGOs and international agencies frequently negotiate informally with individuals who have no rate floor and no certifying body behind them. The working languages of the African Union (AU) illustrate the scale of the problem. Only six languages – English, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili – carry official status at continental level. Thousands of African languages, several with tens of millions of speakers, sit entirely outside formal institutional recognition. The 2025 Nimdzi Interpreting Index found that interpreters worldwide increasingly feel undertrained and underpaid, with regulated fees rising slower than the cost of living. That disconnect is sharper still in markets where no professional body sets a standard in the first place. Researchers behind Masakhane, a grassroots organisation strengthening NLP (natural language processing) research in African languages, have documented how little government support exists for African- language technology work. The lack of investment reinforces a pattern in which the sector remains professionally invisible even as global interest in it grows. Certification and accreditation are where the gap shows most clearly. Accreditation is the single mechanism that lets a buyer determine skill level and justifies charging or paying a premium. Without a credential, a buyer cannot distinguish a trained professional from a willing bilingual volunteer, and an uninformed market prices both the same: at the bottom. In markets with established professional bodies – ATA in the United States, CIOL in the UK, NAATI in Australia – accredited or certified translators can command a premium of 10-25% over their peers. As discussed in a recent dialogue with language professionals, very few African countries have equivalent accreditation for translators and interpreters working in indigenous languages. The global translation industry is valued at roughly $60-$70 billion a year. Africa's language professionals, despite operating in some of the world's most linguistically complex and fastest-growing markets, capture a negligible share of that. I believe closing this gap requires specific institutional interventions. I would start with five tangible actions. 1. Local certification pathways National and regional certification pathways could be built by establishing accredited exams and public registries for professionals working in African languages. These could be administered by universities, national language institutes or professional bodies with backing from regional economic communities or the AU. This should be a five-year continental priority tied to the AU's existing language policy commitments, not a distant aspiration. The scheme could be piloted by using existing university departments as examination centres in, say, a quarter of the countries with active language programmes, such as South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. Standards could then be rolled out regionally, so a credential earned in Accra is recognised in Abuja. 2. Procurement reform Institutional buyers usually set the market. When a health ministry, UN agency or large NGO pays below-market rates, it depresses pricing power for the entire sector, including for buyers who would otherwise pay fairly. Reforming this institutional procurement practice would require government ministries, UN agencies and major NGOs to source language services from certified professionals or vetted networks, at published minimum rates, instead of using ad hoc arrangements. Encouraging or enforcing the adoption of a transparent, publicly available rate floor is vital, in the spirit of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) or AU System change in Africa

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