Belgorod State University is the first in Russia to publish a Russian-Lingala phrasebook

The first broadened conference of the Expert Board on Enhancement and Support of Comprehensive Cooperation with African Countries chaired by Alexander Babakov, the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, covered the issues of Russia-Africa collaboration, parliamentary diplomacy, support of Russian business on the African continent and Russia's humanitarian mission.

BelSU Rector Evgenia Karlovskaya made a presentation on cooperation between Russia and Africa with the focus on the international students’ activities. Currently, the university’s international students body is over 3700 including 558 from African countries. Evgenia Karlovskaya also shared best practices in building scientific and educational diplomacy with the partners from African countries, also via the Institute of BelSU Ambassadors.

According to the Rector, one of the essential factors for building effective cooperation consists in full mutual understanding and absence of language barriers. For this purpose BelSU scientists and the representatives of the Association for Economic Cooperation with African Countries, compiled and published a Russian-Lingala phrasebook aimed to translate into the language, which is spoken by several million people in the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), most part of the Republic of Congo, as well as in Angola, the Central African Republic and the south of South Sudan. The phrasebook published due to the support of Ivan Vangu Ngimbi, the DRC Ambassador to the Russian Federation, and Aleksey Sentebov, the Russia’s Ambassador to Congo, was presented to the participants of the Expert Board by Evgeniya Karlovskaya together with Galli Monastyryova, the Director for Humanitarian Relations of the Association for Economic Cooperation with African Countries. Galli Monastyryova noted that the phrasebook copies would be sent to all diplomatic missions.

The phrasebook has been published in two versions – Russian-Lingala and Lingala-Russian. It includes widely used words and phrases for nine communicative situations: basic phrases, education, business, tourism, in a hotel, in a city, visiting a doctor, in a café, at a restaurant, shopping. Phonetic transcription and bilingual translations are provided for easy reading.