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In 2013 Adam Habib published South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects. Habib approached the Wits Language School and asked for the translation of a condensed version of the book into Zulu, Northern Sotho and Afrikaans. The translation brief requested that the translations should be very close to the original in as far as the use of terminology was concerned to ensure that the original argument remains shrewd and convincing. The language was to be as plain possible, and the title catchy. In this article the Zulu and Afrikaans translations are compared and it is shown how the two translation teams, due to differences in their respective target audiences, but primarily due to the differences in the possibilities and limitations of the languages into which they translated, made use of different translation strategies resulting in the final products differing from each other substantially. As a result of zero equivalence, the Zulu translators often had to make use of translation strategies such a paraphrase and explitation which resulted in a more accessible text as what was the case with the Afrikaans text. The Afrikaans team was not confronted with zero-equivalence. However, the use of standardised terms made the text less accessible and the Fog Index rating of the final text is 14,2. In terms of the translation brief, the Afrikaans text probably did not succeed in its goal.

Cornelius and Pienaar (2017) point out that there is a need for standardised interpreting terminology in South Africa, not only in the indigenous languages, but also in English and Afrikaans. In order to bridge this gap and to contribute to the standardisation of interpreting terminology, these authors decided to translate the 2008 publication by Salaets, Segers and Bloemen, with the Dutch title Terminologie van het tolken, published by Vantitlt in Nijmegen, in Afrikaans and in English, and to provide translation equivalents of the terms in one Nguni (Zulu) and one Sotho language (Northern Sotho). The original Dutch was adapted accordingly. The title of this multilingual product is Interpreting terminology / Terminologie van het tolken / Tolkterminologie / Mareo a botoloki /Amatemu okutolika (Pienaar & Cornelius 2018). The first phase of the project is reported in Cornelius and Pienaar (2017), consisting of the following actions: (1) expanding the original lemma list to include interpreting terms with high frequency of use in South Africa, whilst at the same time also limiting the original lemma list to only those terms that are in use and relevant in a South African context, (2) translating the dictionary articles into Afrikaans and English, (3) localising the content for the South African user, including the additional comments and examples, and (4) adapting the original Dutch to reflect resulting localised content. In this article the focus is on the second phase of the project, namely the provision of translation equivalents in Zulu and Northern Sotho. Finding translation equivalents in Northern Sotho proved to be particularly difficult. In contrast to standardised languages such as English and Afrikaans, the lack of a Northern Sotho standard variety forced the translators who collaborated on the project to act mainly as terminologists, and not translators, as they were continuously confronted with problems relating to zero equivalence (lexical/linguistic gaps). Despite similarities and overlap, translation and terminology represent different knowledge domains. Problems translators grapple with can of course be terminological in nature, for instance when confronted with instances of lexical or linguistic gaps, where the target language lacks a translation equivalent for a source language term. Different approaches to terminography can be followed (Alberts 2017). In order to assist with the standardising of interpreting terminology, whilst also contributing to language development in Zulu and Northern Sotho, the traditional subject-oriented methodology was preferred in Interpreting terminology. This approach focuses on the concept, and the relationship between concepts and conceptual systems. Standardised terms and concepts enable effective communication and knowledge transfer in a particular domain. This approach typically involves eleven steps. In this article we demonstrate how the decision to include translation equivalents in Northern Sotho, in particular, resulted in some disruption of the steps and the order in which the steps were executed, and we highlight some of the stumbling blocks the Northern Sotho translators had to contend with. These translators resorted to a number of strategies to solve these problems, including generalisation, paraphrasing and borrowing.