Palau is a small Pacific Island nation located in the geographical region of Micronesia (not the Federated States of Micronesia). It is the westernmost country in Oceania, relatively close to the Philippines and Indonesia. The island is not heavily populated—it’s home to just around 17,000 people—but it’s nonetheless an independent country with its own culture, language, and government. The people of Palau primarily communicate in their native Palauan language.
Palauan is spoken by roughly 17,000 people, mostly in Palau. Palauan is also the official language of the country—but so is English, which could threaten Palauan’s vitality. Japanese is also official at the state level but rarely spoken in the country, and the endangered indigenous languages of Sonsorolese and Tobian are also official at the state level. In reality, most Palauans speak Palauan, which is used widely around the country, but the promotion of English could threaten Palauan’s status. At TranslationServices.com, we’d hate to see a beautiful, unique language like Palauan come under threat, so we’re doing what we do best: offering professional translation services for Palauan.
Would you like to see a free quote for our Palauan translation services? Just message us today to ask!
Discover some more details about Palauan!
While the vast majority of Palauan speakers reside in Palau, not all of them do. There are also minority communities of Palauan speakers in the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, also located in the Micronesian subregion. Palauan speakers today use the Latin alphabet to write their language, in line with nearly all other languages in Oceania, but Palauan used to be written in katakana, a Japanese syllabary, due to the historical Japanese occupation of the island nation. Palauan is an Austronesian language, but its relation to other Malayo–Polynesian languages is unclear.
Like a lot of other Austronesian languages, Palauan has a complicated pronoun system that includes a clusivity distinction (i.e., there are different words for “we” depending on the inclusion of the listener). Each pronoun has a free form as well as nominative, objective, and possessive forms that are paired with other words as affixes or clitics. Only human nouns are marked for number, with the plurality of non-human nouns ambiguous. Palauan is generally classified as having a verb-object-subject word order, although it depends on how you categorize certain elements of the language.
Customizable Palauan translation services that work for you
No matter what kind of Palauan translation project you’re working on, we’d like to help. We’ve been careful to put together a Palauan translation team that can handle a wide range of translation domains, including business, academic, and creative. For our services translating from Palauan to English, we work with everything from corporate material and academic papers to historical documents (even those written in katakana) and Palauan literature, whether from several centuries ago or last year. For our translation services from English to Palauan, we work with business documents, pedagogical materials, and all sorts of creative works, including books, poetry, websites, apps, games, and more. As proud native speakers of Palauan, our translators are dedicated to the utmost quality.
We can get started on your Palauan translation project today—all you have to do is tell us what you’re looking for!