France is typically considered a monolingual country that only speaks French—and indeed, today, most of the population does speak French. But France is descended from a very multilingual territory upon which various non-French languages are still spoken today. French became the dominant language descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Celtic peoples who once inhabited the land, but on France’s northwestern peninsula of Brittany, the Celtic language spoken long ago—Breton—is still spoken today.
France has had a brutal history of repressing non-French languages, whether that’s Breton, Basque, or any of the many non-French Romance languages like Occitan or Franco-Provençal, which has led to a sharp decline in Breton speakers. Today, most Breton speakers are elderly, with few children learning the language, although revitalization efforts are seeing an increased number of children attending bilingual Breton classes. Nonetheless, the situation for Breton remains precarious, and thus translation services are also hard to attain for the language. But it’s not impossible: TranslationServices.com is here to provide high-quality Breton translation services for those in Brittany and around the world.
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Breton: France’s last surviving Celtic language
Once upon a time, Celtic languages dominated western Europe, but after they were displaced by Germanic and Romance languages, Celtic languages remained primarily only in the British Isles. The exception was Breton, spoken in northwestern France, having come to continental Europe via migrants from modern-day Britain. Today, Breton has around 200,000 speakers, and revitalization efforts are striving to increase this number. The language hails from the Brittonic branch of the Celtic language family, which itself is a subfamily of the Indo–European family, making Breton related to Cornish and more distantly to Welsh.
Breton places the verb first in a sentence, with a verb-subject-object word order, which, while used in all surviving Celtic languages, is only found in about 9% of the world’s languages. Another common Celtic feature that Breton shares is inflected prepositions—Breton prepositions are conjugated for person, and instead of using a verb like “have,” Breton speakers express possession by saying that something is “at” someone. Breton has two genders—masculine and feminine—and both a definite and indefinite article, distinguishing it from other Celtic languages, which have only a definite article. Breton also has a great deal of loanwords from French.
You might think Breton sounds hard—and for most learners, it is. But our Breton translators are native speakers passionate about their language.
We’re here to offer the Breton translation services you want.
It’s hard to find Breton translation services, and it’s even harder to find services that offer the flexibility you want. But that’s precisely what we do. With our team, you can access translation services into Breton as well as out of it. Why might you want translation services into Breton? This is ideal for anyone who wants to translate a questionnaire into Breton or entertainment content like books, websites, and games. Translating such content is a powerful way to help revitalize Breton. And why might you like to translate out of Breton? Perhaps you have a historical document or Breton literature that you’d like to share with people outside of Brittany. Our translators allow you to share Breton culture with anyone.
If you’re looking for Breton translation services, there’s no time like the present. Message us today to discuss your project.