Trust our professional subtitling team for high-quality Somali subtitles.

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English is touted as the “universal language”—but how accurate is that, really? Only around 17% of the world’s population speaks English, leaving a whopping 83% unable to understand or converse in the language. So, while English offers content creators a wide reach, it’s nonetheless severely limited. In some countries, English proficiency is particularly low, such as in Somalia, where most people don’t speak the so-called global lingua franca.

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That means if you want your content to reach Somali people, you have to speak to them in their language. That’s where we come in. Here at TranscriptionServices.com, we work with talented Somali translators and subtitling experts to produce reliable Somali translations for all kinds of content. Whether you want to market your film, TV series, game, documentary, online video, or other content to Somali speakers, we have you covered, delivering your meticulously translated Somali subtitles in the industry-standard format of SRT files. This way, adding them to your project is nice and easy.

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Checking out our rates for Somali subtitling services is easy, too—just ask about a free quote!

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We can help you reach a new audience all across the Horn of Africa.

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The number of Somali speakers exceeds the population of Somalia—indeed, the language stretches far beyond the country’s borders. Naturally, Somali is the primary language of Somalia, spoken widely within the country, although it shares its official language status with Arabic. Somali is also widely spoken in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya, as well as the self-declared state of Somaliland. Somalis living around the world have also brought their language to their new countries, with many speakers in Yemen, the US, the UK, the UAE, Oman, Sweden, Canada, and beyond. Altogether, Somali is estimated to have around 21 million native speakers.

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Among Somali’s many millions of speakers are countless people who suffer from hearing impairments or who are entirely deaf. This is an important demographic to consider when you’re thinking about translating your content into Somali, as dubs don’t serve the hard-of-hearing community. If you’d like us to produce Somali closed captions, which are similar to subtitles but include descriptions of non-linguistic sounds, just let us know—they’re also useful for any Somali speakers who happen to be watching your video content with the audio turned off!

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Somali: a vibrant language written in several scripts

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The Somali language has sustained considerable influence from nearby Arabic, and the inclusion of Arabic as a co-official language in Somalia has only increased Arabic’s effects on the language. But Somali was already related to Arabic to begin with, as both languages are members of the Afroasiatic family. However, Somali resides on the Cushitic branch, whereas Arabic is a Semitic language. While Somali is officially written in the Latin alphabet, many people informally write the language in the Arabic script, as well as the native scripts of Osmanya, Kaddare, and Borama.

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Somali grammar is complex. In terms of syntax, Somali employs a subject-object-verb word order, with both adjectives and prepositions coming after the noun (which technically means Somali has postpositions, not prepositions). The language also uses three separate focus particles to mark new information or emphasis. Nouns are divided into masculine and feminine gender and four cases, but Somali is quite unique in that it marks the subject case and leaves the object case unmarked. Pronouns have separate subject and object forms, as well as a special emphatic form to add emphasis to an utterance. Clearly, Somali is a complicated and nuance-packed language, which makes it all the more important to rely on experts for your Somali subtitling needs.

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We invite you to work with our team of passionate Somali subtitling experts.

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We’ve done our best to put together a robust Somali subtitling team featuring experts from all over Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and the vast Somali diaspora, ensuring a wide coverage of Somali variants. We’re also capable of providing Somali subtitles in the numerous scripts used to write the language, although the Latin alphabet is standard. For any type of content in any genre, our Somali subtitlers are committed to providing quality subtitles.

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Are you worried about any technical terminology that your content may contain? Don’t be—our Somali subtitling team is diverse enough that we have experts in many different fields who can cater to your content needs!

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We’d love to help you broaden your audience to the Somali-speaking world. Contact us now to set your Somali subtitling journey in motion!