Sometimes in the early sixties, the world didn’t notice when a baby boy was born in Turalei, a small town in South Sudan. But the world noticed twenty years later when the Washington Bullets recruited him to play for them.
His dream of playing in the NBA had come true. For ten years from 1985 to 1995, he played in the toughest, most lucrative basketball league in the world.
He could see further than most people, not just in the streets of the USA where he lived for most of his adult life, but also on the basketball courts where virtually all players are above six feet. Yet, he stood taller than them. At 7.7 feet, he was the tallest ever player in the NBA history. Even Shaq and Yao Ming, some of the best-known giants in the game, were shorter than him.
After he retired from basketball, he shunned America’s gilded comfort for the war-torn battlefields of South Sudan, his native home. This war took the lives of 250 members of his extended family.
He died in 2010 from severe kidney trouble and complications of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare skin disorder.
He is Manute Bol, one of the most famous Dinka men in the world.
Manute’s life and death capture the unique story of the Dinka people, who are some of the tallest in the world.
The Dinka language that they speak is also quite unique. It falls in the Nilotic category of African languages. Other major Nilotic languages include the Nuer, also from South Sudan, the Luo from Kenya and Acholi from Uganda. All our English to Dinka Interpreters/Translators, English to Nuer Interpreters/ Translators, English to Luo Interpreters/Translators and English to Acholi Interpreters/ translators have one thing in common - Their dark beautiful skin.
Just like Manute, thousands of Dinka speakers have landed in foreign countries like the USA, UK and Australia with little comprehension of English. This leaves them severely disadvantaged because language is the paintbrush that paints meaning into our world.
Among these Dinka and Nuer speakers were the Lost Boys of Sudan, a group comprising more than 20,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese boys who fled to neighbouring countries after the civil war broke out in Sudan in 1987. Almost fifteen years later in 2001, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees resettled some of them in the United States. At roughly this period, Languages Africa was born with the express aim of helping Africans to converse with the world and vice versa. We do this primarily through translation and interpretation of African languages and top on the list is our trusted Dinka Interpretation and Dinka Translation Services.
Although we did not offer any interpretation services to the original lost boys who landed in the USA back then, we are now doing so for dozens of Dinka speakers not just in the US but also in the UK and Australia. Dinka Consecutive Over the Phone Interpretation (OPI) and Dinka Consecutive Video Remote Interpretation, all make it possible for us to do so in real-time using state of the art platforms such as Boostlingo, Zoiper and in recent times, Zoom.
Many of the calls that our Dinka interpreters face, place them right at the centre of difficult situations thousands of miles away from East Africa where we are physically located in 5 of our Satellite Interpreter Call Centres all over Africa.
