Brazil is one of the biggest countries in the world, in terms of both land area and population. But the lands that make up the Brazil we know today weren’t always united—for millennia, the area was home to a huge variety of different ethnolinguistic groups, with their own cultures and languages. Since European colonization, Brazil has become predominantly Portuguese-speaking, but Portuguese certainly isn’t the native language of every Brazilian. Take, for example, the indigenous Kaingang people, who still speak their native Kaingang.
It's difficult to ascertain exact figures to assess the size of the Kaingang-speaking community, but estimates put the number of native speakers at about 20,000, roughly two-thirds of the ethnic population. Typically, Kaingang speakers live on designated indigenous lands, similar to the reservations in the US and Canada, where the language can thrive to a certain degree, but Portuguese still poses a major threat to the overall vitality of the language. Translation services for Kaingang are generally difficult to access, as well—so we at TranslationServices.com are proud to present our Kaingang translation services.
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Diving into the grammar and background of Kaingang
Kaingang is one of the many indigenous languages of Brazil, hailing from the south of the gargantuan country. The language covers a large geographical area, with Kaingang-speaking communities found in the states of São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul. The language belongs to the Macro–Jê language family, a large group spread across vast swaths of inland eastern Brazil. Kaingang constitutes the biggest member of the family, but Xavante and Kayapó also boast relatively large numbers of speakers.
In terms of grammar, Kaingang uses a subject-object-verb word order as its default, which is the most common word order in the world. It explicitly marks the subject with a postnominal particle, but the object is left unmarked. Verbs don’t conjugate—to express tense, aspect, and mood, speakers add small grammatical words before or after the verb. Kaingang also features an in-depth evidentiality system, with small words added to indicate where a speaker obtained the information they’re sharing. There are four different particles for hearsay, three for visual experience, one for non-visual experience (generally auditory), one for inference, and one for assumptions. These can be pretty tricky to translate, but don’t worry—you can rely on our native-speaking Kaingang translators.
A full selection of Kaingang translation services
At TranslationServices.com, we’re dedicated to providing the best Kaingang translation services we possibly can. That includes coverage of the different extant Kaingang dialects—Central Kaingang, Southern Kaingang, and Xokleng—with native-speaking translators from across southern Brazil. Our Kaingang translators are passionate about their job, drawing on their experience to bring you the best translation services they can, whether you’re looking for translation from English to Kaingang or from Kaingang to English.
If you want specialty translation services, we’ll do our best to match you up with the right translator for the job. We have translators who specialize in academic translation, business translation, literary translation, localization, and more, allowing us to cater to professors, students, researchers, businesspeople, CEOs, entrepreneurs, marketers, novelists, bloggers, journalists, software developers, language activists, and more. We can translate interview transcripts, business meeting notes, and traditional stories from Kaingang to English, and we can translate educational materials for children, marketing collateral for organizations, and digital media like games or apps into Kaingang, supporting the community. And don’t worry if your document touches on technical subject matter, because a lot of our translators have expertise in additional fields. All you have to do is let us know the subject you’re working with, and we’ll pair you up with our best team member for the job.
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