I’ve been to enough international activist conferences to spot a trend – when it comes to languages, Africa seems to have it far harder than any other continent. Comrades from Latin America can chat through the colonial expedients of Spanish and, if need be, Portuñol. Asia seems to manage through at least one person in a group speaking in English, as does Europe, with occasional resort to German. Africa has to surmount English, French, and Portuguese. It’s a blinding headache, especially if, as I was, you’re the one called upon to broker this Babel.
Happily, if you don’t have to do it in realtime, there’s a solid directory of free translation services here, of which the best has proven to be www.freetranslation.com. And that’s your public service of the day.