The National Language Service promotes and facilitates communication across languages in South Africa. In keeping with the language requirements of the Constitution, the NLS manages the linguistic diversity of South African society and is responsible for harnessing all the languages of the people by putting into practical effect policy measures aimed at promoting the use of these languages, including those languages which have historically been neglected.
The NLS' core business is to meet the language requirements of the Constitution by facilitating, promoting and providing a translation and editing service in all the official languages and by managing language diversity through language planning and terminology projects.
The NLS functions as the Government's professional language support system by translating official documents in all the official languages. Its terminology service assists with the development and modernisation of the technical vocabularies of the official languages. The language planning functions include advising the Government on the development of language policy and implementation strategies.
Famous quotes containing the words national, language and/or services:
“While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had no national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Men will say that in supporting their wives, in furnishing them with houses and food and clothes, they are giving the women as much money as they could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.”
—Elizabeth M. Gilmer (1861–1951)