When most people think of South America, they imagine Spanish as the sole language of the continent, with the notable exception of Portuguese in Brazil. But in reality, close to 450 languages are spoken on the linguistically diverse continent, including hundreds of indigenous languages. The biggest indigenous language in the entire Americas is Southern Quechua, and one of the biggest dialects of Southern Quechua is South Bolivian Quechua.
Despite South Bolivian Quechua’s strong position as an indigenous language, Spanish remains the dominant language in Bolivia, stifling the growth of the region’s Southern Quechua dialect. It’s difficult to find translation services for South Bolivian Quechua, and most agencies that offer such services only translate to and from Spanish. We at TranslationServices.com decided to change that—so we built a professional team of translators who translate between the Quechua of Southern Bolivia and English.
For a free quote for our South Bolivian Quechua translation services, shoot us a message today.
South Bolivian Quechua: a relic of South America’s rich cultural diversity
With roughly 2.3 million speakers, South Bolivian Quechua is the biggest indigenous language in Bolivia, which recognizes 36 different languages, including many indigenous languages. It’s spoken in the southwestern part of Bolivia as well as adjacent areas of Argentina, where it’s also called Colla. The language is considered vulnerable, meaning most children learn it as their first language but have limited opportunities to use it outside of the home. Revitalization efforts have surged in recent years.
Like most indigenous languages of the Americas, South Bolivian Quechua is polysynthetic, meaning it constructs long, complicated, and morphologically dense words with a series of affixes. Speakers of the variant of Quechua in southern Bolivia use suffixes to express desire, possession, causation, obligation, and more. In many cases, these suffixes can even change word classes, such as turning a noun into a verb. Another notable feature of South Bolivian Quechua (and all Quechuan languages) is inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns—in other words, South Bolivian Quechua has a different word for “we” depending on whether the listener is included.
Translating a language as complicated and morphologically dense as South Bolivian Quechua to and from English is challenging, so it’s important to entrust the task to experts. We’ve compiled a team of the best South Bolivian Quechua translators we could find—just reach out to find out more.
The many use cases of South Bolivian Quechua translation services
If you’re a historian, you’d probably be interested in South Bolivian Quechua translation services to decipher historical documents or traditional literary works. Anyone interested in promoting Quechuan culture, in fact, may like to translate different works for worldwide consumption. On the other side of the spectrum, those doing research on Quechuan populations may want to translate questionnaires into South Bolivian Quechua, and language revitalizationalists can use our translation services to bring rich media and literature to the South Bolivian Quechua language.
No matter why you need South Bolivian Quechua translation services, you can count on us. Just reach out to discuss your needs.