A note on the translation of Swahili into English

Some features of the morphology of Swahili are discussed from the point of view of mechanizing a dictionary. A preliminary program is described. To the best of my knowledge, no work has previously been carried out on the mechanical translation of any Bantu language. This note is therefore a first suggestion of a possible basis for a scheme for the mechanical translation of Swahili into English. Swahili, in common with other Bantu languages, makes great use of prefixes. This is its most distinctive feature when compared with European languages. All agreements between adjectives, nouns, and verbs are shown by means of prefixes. There are prefixes for the subject and object of a verb and for the verb tense. Negation of a verb is also shown by means of prefixes. Suffixes are also used, but a lot of Swahili can be spoken without using them. Suffixes are used to show motion to or from a place and, apart from this, are used almost exclusively in modifying the form of verbs. The passive, causative, prepositional, reciprocal, subjunctive, plural imperative, and some singular imperative forms are all constructed by adding a suffix to the verb stem. As is usually the case, addition of a suffix often causes modification of the stem itself. For example, the passive form of a verb ending with the letter a is made by changing the final a to wa, as in kuandika ("to write") and kuan-dikwa ("to be written"). However, kununua ("to buy") gives rise to kununuliwa ("to be bought"). Prefixes, on the other hand, are added with no amendment to the verb stem, and I see this as one of the reasons why the strong reliance on prefixes will make Swahili reasonably susceptible to mechanical translation. Other advantages of the prefix structure are: 1. There is less need for context-dependent analysis. For example, if the present tense of the verb "run" is recognized in English, one still does not know the final form of the word: it could be "they run" or "he runs." In Swahili, however, no such distinction is made: wa-na-kimbea, a-na-kimbea. (Wa means "they"; a means "he"; na denotes the present tense; kimbea is the verb stem, meaning "run." The hyphens are not part of the Swahili word but are inserted for clarity.) 2. While a noun or adjective takes only one prefix at a time, a verb stem may have several prefixes concate-nated …