Decolonizing Science Writing in South Africa [Sibusiso Biyela for The Open Notebook]

"My job was to write about the discovery for the South African website SciBraai—and to do so in my native language of Zulu. But there’s no word for “dinosaur” in Zulu. Nor are there words for “Jurassic,” “fossilization,” or “evolution.” Despite the fact that Zulu—or isiZulu, as the language is called in South Africa—is spoken by some 10 million people, it simply doesn’t have the words for communicating science."

How do you tell a science story without a science vocabulary? Check out Sibusiso Biyela’s fascinating story on thwarting linguistic oppression to make science writing accessible,