Rundi Language Hub

Rundi Language Hub is a multi-lingual Language Service Provider based in Bujumbura, the economic capital city of Burundi. It was co-founded by three talented linguists so angry to see how the language service providing in the East African country had been messy and unsurprisingly ineffective. Anyone could call themselves “a translator or an interpreter” in the city.

Some would go far and claim, “I am a bilingual/multilingual, therefore a qualified translator”. Hermenegilde Ntakarutimana, Pascasie Nicayenzi, and Cédrick Irakoze have never bought into such a ‘street paradigm’ used by some non-linguists to justify their unprofessional standards.

The three were fed up with the disorganized kind of ‘language market’. Having all interacted with other cultures and languages, having been formally trained in linguistics, having grown an interest in translation and interpretation, and especially having practiced the language work less formally in a set of situations, they decided to act and found Rundi Language Hub.

Rundi Language Hub was acknowledged by the Burundian legislation on September 18, 2019, by the country’s Investment Promotion Agency (API). It was also granted both the Trade Register Number and Tax Identification Number by the country’s Revenue Authority (OBR) on September 24, 2019. Rundi Language Hub was then registered as a Private Company with the area of operation in Languages: Translation, Interpretation, and Language Teaching.

We are happy that the company has grown enough to contribute to the country’s GDP, but what we boast the most about is the way we have brought professionalism in our dear craft. We are always blown away by testimonies from our partners, not only praising our work quality, but also our honesty to deliver within reasonable deadlines. We have, so far, built bridges with individuals and corporates from Christian ministry organizations, banking and finance institutions, trade operators, regular businesses, agro-businesses, Bible Schools, churches, and more.

One of the strongest strings that bind the team at Rundi is the way it was founded. The three co-founders were all not happy with the way translation and interpretation services were handled in Burundi. They were inspired by Christian values, mission, and vision they shared on how people can be honest, professional, and God-driven in businesses. They also dreamt to not just make money through their hustle, but also use it as a tool to make an impact in the community through charity and witness of Godly transformed lives.

Vision and Mission of Rundi Language Hub

RLH has a broad vision in the world of language services in Burundi. We look forward to creating a language service delivering a space that is professional, principled, honest, organized, and united.

We also thrive to bring technology to the cabins and desks of interpreters and translators in Burundi. To some, it’s a myth, an unattainable crazy dream. However, we tasted from the cup, we sipped through it, we know how not only feasible and practical it is, but also enjoyable and interesting from the behind-the-scenes point of view.

Rundi Language Hub sees the use of technology so capital to this career success in our modern era. We collaborate and deal with partners and clients from all over the world. CATs, MT tools, Corpuses, and many other of the likes make our translators’ lives easy. We love it. We aim to bring this to a whole new and higher level.

Finally, how safe is the partner after handing a task to a project manager? How confident are they in the quality of the service to be delivered? How clean is the task and how protected are the data and information not intended for the public stored in servers of a Language Service Provider? We kicked the project with a number of flaws that we are happy to have eliminated one after another. We can’t wait to see you witness this, first-hand. Welcome to our broad family of partners and supporters.

End of the year? Here we are, by the grace of God!

2020 has undoubtedly been one of the most terrifying years of our lifetime.

None of us alive can deny that it has been a unique time that we had to adapt our working ways to the global health threat that did not spare an acre on the globe. At Rundi Language Hub, we are grateful that we were able to join the new normal and make good out of the challenges that were presented before us.

What are we grateful for?

First of all, we are so thankful to the partners we got during this special pandemic time. Some of our leading team members were more positive about the changes we had to put in, others were less, but we did it anyway.

Getting new clients meant us to double our efforts, to learn more lessons, and to reimagine our strategies to serve them in an unprecedentedly careful way while creating a dealing communication landscape that saw both of our parties win. Kudos to all the partners who foresaw potential in us and who entrusted us with a huge responsibility to work on some of their classified and top-recorded documents. We will take the time to say ‘Thank you’ to our individual amiable clients.

Second of all, a big shoutout to our linguistic team members who, despite numerous challenges, accepted to get stretched and learn a lot more new technologies that helped them navigate on this uncertain sea. Working from where everyone was made our work better, faster, and our lives spared from the health danger that the world faced.

Lastly, we cannot overlook the progress we have made this year by getting our online presence. It was, in part, to adapt to the global working situation, but also to what a modern business needs to look like in our time. We not only have our website but also are more involved in online communication than ever before.

We sympathize with those who lost their loved ones and/or whose jobs and businesses were affected. At Rundi Language Hub, we believe that this will come to pass, we just have to respect the health officials’ recommendations and trust the process.

As we break for the year-end festive season, we acknowledge your efforts to make the world a better place in many ways. We appreciate you for having chosen us, and we reaffirm our commitment to making our partnerships swifter.  We can’t wait to see you in 2021 with more innovative solutions that will make our linguistic work even better.

Having said this, Rundi Language Hub thank you all for the partnerships. We are more than readily happy to work on your language work from/into French, English, Kirundi, and more.

Happy New Year in advance,

We appreciate you all!

Rundi Language Hub Management Team.

Ladies and gentlemen, my team and I are thrilled to introduce you to Rundi Language Hub. The Hub is not new, nor its work less well known. A few partners have testified so far, and we will share what they honestly had to say.

But what’s on the earth is new in the game? Where we reach today… the digitalization of what we do is pride, not just for us the founders, but also for a number of partners from afar who will be able to e-meet us thanks to our online presence.

Covid-19 has hit us of course, but it has also left us with a lesson, the one we cherish today. Happy to work with you all on our language services at the top. We are glad to share our International Translation Day Blog, which literally marked our being live.

Our team has also learned a lot. Cédrick did what he enjoys doing, telling us his big business lessons learned during the pandemic era. Stay with us, more stuff on the way. We did not come this far to let you down half the way.

SHORT PROFILE

Graduated from the University of Burundi in English Department (First Class Honours). He is a YALI (Young African Leaders Initiative) fellow and Associate Ambassador at ISERH (Initiative for Sound Education, Relationship & Health).

He has a good record in language research (more interested in Bantu languages) as well as translation and interpretation for both normal and crisis (humanitarian) situations. He has been a Crisis Response/ Community & Recruitment Intern at Translators without Borders more active in a broader linguistic community for recruiting and attending to language professionals from around the world.

Developed translation/ interpretation, Language Teaching and writing skills as a freelancer, volunteer, intern and member of staff, a proven public speaker through speaking in regional conferences. An investigative journalism experience earned through fact-checking and bilingual copy-editing at Code for Africa’s PesaCheck.

A Writing career awarded a “Certificate of Merit” in 2018 by the University of Burundi for the novella published in 2017 in Germany. Awarded by TWB (Translators without Borders) as a Dedicated Translator in September 2018 for the tasks on Educational materials for Burundian refugees and on the outbreak of Ebola in DRC, a project with WHO (World Health Organization).

Another translator acknowledgement is the Honourable Mention by TWB, Access to Knowledge Award 2019: Empowerment Award issued April 2019 to his Rundi translators’ team. Developed an ESL instructor profile from the received education (TESOL) and an unparalleled experience at EACH (East African Candle of Hope) from 2014 as an EFL instructor of Adults and Professionals in diverse domains.

A co-founder and COO of Rundi Language Hub founded in 2019, one of the leading language centers in Burundi. He is now a Fact-checker and Bilingual (French&English) Copy Editor at PesaCheck, a project for Code for Africa.

MAIN TRANSLATION & INTERPRETING PROJECTS

With an experience in education, health, and legal translation, the following are some of the big projects that Cédrick Irakoze worked on:

•             Educational Materials for iACT with Translators without Borders

•             Health and Ebola-related Manuals for the World Health Organization

•             Child Right Modules for iACT on Physical Education and Mental Wellness

•             Culinary & Business manuals for Striker Translations

•             Immigration law-related documents for Daily Translate

•             Contracts with Mid Localize

•             Shammah Temple Church Services (Cabin-based Simultaneous Interpreting)

•             Transcription of Microfinance-Related interviews for Hope International

•             Students For Liberty Regional Conference on Free Market Interpreting (Live Consecutive Interpreting)

•             Shammah Temple Sunday School Teachers Training Interpreting (Live Simultaneous Interpreting)

•             Microfinance and banking-related documents for Turame Community Finance

•             Business contracts and statuses for Dukorane Transports

•             General and Science-related translation, revision, and transcription tasks for Excellente Services Pvt. Ltd.

•             SPLS websites and social media literacy flyers for Translations USA

•             Religion in the time of coronavirus documents for iACT

•             Coronavirus-related documents for War Child-Netherlands

•             Wheelchair training documents for Free Wheelchair Mission

•             Safeguarding violations related documents for The International Rescue Committee-Global

•             Interface translation for Bibliothèque Sans Frontières

•             Health Information for Refugees for USAHello

• Veterinary Medicine-related documents for SOBUPRODIA

• Phytosanitary products for SOBUPRODIA

• Internal Regulations for Turame Microfinance

• COVID-19 related posters for the East African Association of Translators and Interpreters

• Anti-Money Laundering and Know your Customer Policy for Turame Microfinance

• Group Loan Client Monitoring for Turame Community Finance

• Contracts and Legal correspondences for On call Europa Language Services

• Work on Covid-19 Awareness for East Africa Interpreters and Translators

The pandemic period has never been a joking experience for me, but it has surely been a time of personal growth.

I was running Rundi Language Hub, a language business where we do translation and interpreting. As may other businesses in the early stages, this global health issue has hit us hard.

Seeing how the growth was taking place and how we were getting new partners, so many plans were on the table and my partners and I were witnessing an incredible growth, just a few months before the global lockdown.

The nature of our business didn’t allow much to be done during this hard time. Most of the translation and interpreting work that we do involves clients and partners from western countries, especially the Americas and Europe. It was crystal clear to us that partnerships had to be shaken and strategies to change in one way or another. We had to adapt our sails to the wind.

The interpreting side of our job had to cease since no one was traveling from the west to our country and we had to redefine our translation department. This didn’t work as we thought, however, considering that our readiness to work online wasn’t that of our clients whose countries and initiatives were more at stake than ours. Of course, we had to touch where our hand could reach.

In spite of all the wind that smashed our faces, we are proud that we’ve been able to use the skills and talents we had, not just growing our organization’s net worth, but serving the community. Personally, and surely collectively since two of my other partners were also voluntarily involved, we translated some stuff related to COVID-19 absolutely for no penny.

We were all conscious that even though our company could gain some money, lives were called into a game no one knew they could win. Having for example fliers and all kinds of documents calling for awareness, protection, and fight against the new coronavirus in English and French_ as it was_ could not help Burundians a lot. We translated them into our local language, Kirundi.

We’ve got to work and do all that we can to help fight this global pandemic in our own way. Did we save lives? Yes. Did we earn money out of that particular campaign? No, but we knew it was worth it. We have understood the ancient words of wisdom that read

“In the end, what we own is worth less, but what good we do for our community with what we can is worth everything.”

It was “planting a tree under whose shade we were not going to sit” … but actually and fortunately, we will sit under that shade when we will all overcome this threat.

On the other side of professional life, as a writer and fact-checker, it didn’t hit me much. These skills were proven to be very much needed during the pandemic. We need stories to read when we are not crossing the next road, we need movies to watch when sitting on our sofa, we need verified information to roll our eyes on when we feel bored or just hungry for updates in our community or even from afar.

In this, I probably did well as I got a position as a fact-checker and copy editor for PesaCheck (Nairobi), the first East African fact-checking organization where we are doing a lot of work debunking misinformation spreading here and there.

The freedom that social media platforms offer us is oftentimes abused or misused since some people sit down and plan how to spread fake news for getting attention, gaining views, or hundreds of more reasons. I massively wrote investigative stories on diverse debunks and conspiracies related to COVID-19 and other domains of life affected by the pandemic. One of my stories was ranked 2^nd in Poynter’s global monthly selection of the top 5 stories worldwide. I was humbled to see where our ink can reach.

I was also internationally published in June and July in I AM Magazine and The War Against Fake News Anthology respectively for my writing pieces. Was it easy? I don’t think it was, but adapting to the weather makes man enjoy the climate threat, no matter what.

Let’s learn from one another, let’s support one another, let’s check on one another, let’s help our communities get through this threat, let’s be kind like never before. We shall all overcome and come back to our former normal… or maybe do better.

To finish, I cannot lack to share a lesson I learned from this (probably one of the most conducive environments to learning and growing). Hard times are not always there to kill us, we learn from them, we grow, we thrive, and most importantly get out of them stronger and wiser.

“Adversity makes you meet your real self.”

Cedrick Irakoze

Co-founder, Senior Linguist & COO, Rundi Language Hub.

Writer, copy editor, fact-checker.