ABSTRACT

The choice of translations from English into Kiswahili has been motivated by the effort made to make Kiswahili language keep up with global trends of developments. However, machine translation between English and Kiswahili poses great challenge due to the structural differences. Translation by computer is generally referred to as Machine Translation. Machine translation is the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language into another. The differences presented in this chapter – for example class agreement system, word order, the use of indefinite/definite articles in English which are dropped in Kiswahili, markers of gender etc. – pose intricate challenges to translation and specifically to machine translation. Kiswahili has an agreement system. This is the system that governs and maintains subject verb agreement in a sentence structure. The data is presented in the form of linguistic categories: namely morphology, syntax and semantics.