In environmental conservation programmes such as tree planting, the need and potential gains of using local language are very high. A project in English-Kishwahili forestry →terminology was therefore launched in Tanzania, involving the author and Professors H.J.M. Mwansoko of the Institute of Kiswahili Research in Dar-es-Salaam, and A.G. Mugasha, of the Faculty of Forestry and Nature Conservation, Sokoine University of Agriculture.
The project consists in establishing a list of English →terms in forestry as →headwords and their equivalents in Kiswahili. Simple entries of English/Kiswahili →headwords and their equivalents in Kiswahili/English are used. When no Kiswahili equivalents are available, they have to be coined using following processes:
- joining two or more words (compounding)
- formation of a word by adding affixes/suffixes (affixation or derivation)
- introducing elements from other languages through contact and/or imitation (borrowing)
- calque (loan translation)
- compression

It is estimated that some 6,000 basic forestry →terms will be compiled. So far approximately 2,000 →terms have been collected. Funding is the major constraint.