Author:Abdulrahman Umar & Isyaku Abdullahi Lawal
Date: 20/02/2026
Language remains central to educational equity in Nigeria, where over 500 indigenous languages coexist with English as the dominant medium of instruction. The national policy on education mandates mother-tongue instruction in early grades, yet evidence shows this remains largely unimplemented, with government support in teacher training and instructional materials notably lacking (Ogunniran et al., 2024). Multilingual disparities and policy inertia have long undermined curriculum relevance and learner outcomes (Ugwu, 2021). This article argues that translation, particularly leveraging advances in machine translation for Nigerian languages (Ekle & Das, 2025; Orife, 2020), offers tangible pathways to bridging curricular and linguistic divides. It synthesizes policy analysis and recent technological developments to propose a curriculum design model that integrates translation and interpretation as core components of pedagogical and instructional planning. Finally, it offers actionable recommendations for curriculum developers, policymakers, and language professionals to operationalize translation for improved educational access and equity in Nigeria’s multilingual setting.
Keywords: Translation in Education; Mother-Tongue Instruction; Multilingual Curriculum; Neural Machine Translation; Nigeria Education Policy.
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