Most people in Canada speak English as their first language. Yes, of course the famously bilingual country is also home to a lot of native French speakers, mostly in the eastern provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, but English dominates the daily lives of the vast majority of Canadians. Given Canada’s strong tradition of accepting immigrants, you can also find immigrant communities speaking languages from all over the world—it’s common to hear Chinese or Punjabi in parts of Canada, for example. But what people tend to forget is the dozens of important and unique indigenous languages still spoken in the country, such as Northwestern Ojibwe.
Ojibwe is one of the biggest indigenous languages in Canada, with more than 50,000 people speaking it as their first language. It’s spoken over such a wide area, covering all of Ontario into Manitoba and even Saskatchewan, as well as dipping southward into the U.S. states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and beyond, which has given rise to a plethora of Ojibwe dialects. Northwestern Ojibwe, with more than 20,000 speakers, is one of the biggest, and today, we’re proudly announcing our new translation team specifically dedicated to Northwestern Ojibwe.
If you’re interested in Northwestern Ojibwe translation services, you may like to see a quote for our rates. Request a free quote today!
Take a quick tour of Northwestern Ojibwe with us
As the name implies, Northwestern Ojibwe is spoken in the northwestern portion of the Ojibwe dialect continuum. Specifically, it’s native to communities in northwestern Ontario and parts of Manitoba, where the bulk of its 20,000 speakers reside. Northwestern Ojibwe is rated as “vulnerable” by UNESCO, which means that while it’s endangered, it’s in better standing than many other Ojibwe dialects.
Ojibwe is part of the Algonquian language family, which once spanned all across eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Today, Ojibwe is the second-biggest Algonquian language, with Cree ranking as the first. Northwestern Ojibwe and its cousins are grammatically complex languages with a considerable degree of morphological inflection, making them intimidating for English speakers. Some notable features of Northwestern Ojibwe include the use of a fourth-person pronoun, which allows speakers to distinguish between multiple third-person referents in a conversation. Nouns are also distinguished by animacy, with different grammatical patterns used for animate and inanimate referents. All word orders are possible in Northwestern Ojibwe, though verb-final constructions are rare. In fact, verb-initial sentences are most common in the Algonquian language.
Our passionate translators are making Northwestern Ojibwe translation services accessible.
Given the sheer grammatical complexity of Northwestern Ojibwe and the other dialects of the important indigenous language, translating between Ojibwe and English can be a major challenge. But since we’ve only hired native Northwestern Ojibwe speakers with a burning passion for their language, we’re confident they can handle any projects you may have for them. With many of our translators having grown up bilingual in Northwestern Ojibwe and English, it’s easy for them to translate both into and out of Northwestern Ojibwe, making our translation services flexible and appropriate for a wide range of needs.
On the subject of translation flexibility, our team is also diverse in the types of translation they specialize in and the fields that they’re familiar with. Perhaps you’d like to promote your business’s products or services to Northwestern Ojibwe speakers, connecting with them in their own language—or maybe you’d like to convert pedagogical content into Northwestern Ojibwe as a way to teach local kids in their native tongue. Northwestern Ojibwe speakers have a rich and beautiful culture with many traditional tales and stories, and if you’d like to share these cultural artifacts with others, we can translate them into English—and we can also translate modern-day books, poetry, apps, games, websites, and more into Northwestern Ojibwe, which gives the language more legitimacy and can do wonders in helping to promote it.
Our Northwestern Ojibwe translators are eager to help with your project in whatever way they can. Reach out today to get started with Northwestern Ojibwe translation!