Just what is a fossil, anyway?

Whether the question is posed to 12-year-olds studying science or adults going about their daily business, many would struggle to explain.

For Zulu-speaking South African schoolchildren working with science communicator Sibusiso Biyela, an added challenge has been not just grasping the concept in English, but translating it back into Zulu, which doesn’t have words for such terms. While Zulu, or isiZulu as it is called in South Africa, is spoken by almost 12 million people, it lacks the words for communicating many scientific concepts.

Ilahle (“coal”), suggested one girl. It makes sense, since coal is a fossil fuel. A boy came up with a version of amathambo amadala atholakala emhlabathini (“old bones found in the ground”). This translation is intuitive but imperfect, as plants can be fossils as well.

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Around the world, enterprising individuals often have to come up with local translations of scientific concepts. These can be lyrical, like bisaatsinsiimaan (“beautiful plantings”) for Einstein’s theory of relativity, devised by a mother-son duo who were translating astrophysics into the indigenous North American language Blackfoot, or Siksiká.