Check the quality of your Swahili translation

Swahili alphabet and characters

The Swahili alphabet should display only the following characters. If your document is not showing correctly, then first check that the encoding for that program and font supports Swahilian.

Lower-case characters:

Swahili characters (alphabet)

Upper-case characters

Swahili grammar rules

Nouns

Swahili nouns are distinctive by prefixes and are grouped in 15 classes. Nouns are not distinctive by gender.

Nouns agree with adjectives, numberals, demonstratives, possesives and relatives by the use of affixes.

Three are two numbers: singular and plural.

Verbs

Swahili formatting rules

Date formats

Region	Tanzanian
Short date format	dd/MM/yy
	e.g. 17/03/16
Long date format	dd MMMM, yyyy
	e.g. 17 Machi, 2016

Numbers and currency

Swahili capitalisation usage

Should be capitalised

People’s names.
Geographical names (of countries, counties/states, cities etc.).
Headings/titles: only the first word is capitalised unless a proper noun is featured
Names of states, unions, federations.

Should NOT be capitalised

Solutions for Swahili

Stepping Stone provides translation and localisation services for Swahili

Region	Tanzania
Decimal separator	. (period)
	e.g. 11.50
Thousand separator	, (comma)
	e.g. 2,000, not 2 000
Five and more digit numbers format	split into groups of three from the right using comma
	e.g. 20,000, not 20 000
Tanzanian currency name	Tanzanian Shillings
Currency symbol	Tshs.
Currency symbol position	Before the amount
	e.g. Tshs. 150.50