ON AUGUST 8, Principe Tuyishime and Nancy Umuhire released a dictionary that encompasses more than 500 Kinyarwanda vocabularies with translations in English and French, as well as images illustrating their meanings. According to Tuyishime, the dictionary was designed for linguists, writers, translators, students, teachers, researchers and everyone who needs to understand the most basic vocabularies in Kinyarwanda. “We started working on this dictionary in late May which means that the process towards publication took us around two months,” he said. “We selected the most used vocabularies in Kinyarwanda that every new learner would need. These include the most commonly used verbs, daily life terms; including school, environment, meals, feelings, sports, music etc.” Tuyishime and Umuhire are employees of Gusoma Publishing, a company that specialises in publishing Kinyarwanda books, teaching Kinyarwanda to foreigners and people in the diaspora as well as developing IT solutions basically in Kinyarwanda. Speaking about their inspiration, Tuyishime said that at first, this book served as a learning material for a Kinyarwanda lesson for students and when he and his team realised its impact, they decided to improve it by adding more words so that it could be a basic tool for linguists as well as people who wanted to learn the languages it features. He reveals that the process was not difficult since they had the same target and vision regarding the public needing the book, adding that his team members were invested in it since they are all linguists. Tuyishime says that he started his professional writing journey in 2019, mainly working for companies and individuals, in writing books, websites contents as well as translations and transcriptions. Some of the notable works he gave are “100 mistakes I don’t regret”, a book by Frank Rubaduka, and “Four Genius Windows” by the same author in collaboration with Eric Niyitanga. Through that career path that Frank paved for him, he shares that he has upgraded his writings by joining Gusoma publishing, adding that the mentioned dictionary is his first work to be published even though he is working on many others. His fellow, Umuhire, found her niche in writing after graduating from the University of Rwanda in Development Studies, given her background in linguistics. She is currently working on some books that are yet to be published, according to Tuyishime. Talking about the challenges they face in the literary industry, he says that their audience isn’t yet interested in reading hence prefer verbal content to written ones which minimise the consumption of the written works. “Another challenge is that authors still have financial issues regarding costs to release their books. Those include fees for publication, marketing, promotion, etc...” Tuyishime and his team plan to push this dictionary far so that students, teachers, linguists and everyone in need can access it. He adds that they are also planning to release another edition with more vocabulary, adding that this aligns with their aim which is to make Kinyarwanda a universal language. The dictionary can now be found on Amazon. For more information, you can reach out to them via website or contact principet36@gmail.com or 0785864223
