Southeast Asia is an incredibly linguistically diverse place—and that’s especially true of Maritime Southeast Asia. Indonesia’s 17,000+ islands are home to speakers of more than 700 indigenous languages, and while many of these languages are spoken by only a few hundred or thousand people, some are spoken by hundreds of thousands or even millions. Indonesian, the national lingua franca, ties most of the nation together, but in their local communities, people tend to speak their mother tongue—languages like Mongondow.
Mongondow boasts a native speaker population of about 230,000 people, which makes it one of Indonesia’s bigger indigenous languages, but unfortunately, the language is endangered. Certainly, Indonesian exerts pressure on the minority language, but Mongondow is more seriously threatened by Manado Malay, the local lingua franca, whose influence has somewhat altered Mongondow grammar. Not many companies offer Mongondow translation services, but we at TranslationServices.com do: we’ve just launched a Mongondow translation team.
We can provide free quotes for our Mongondow translation services—all you need to do is ask!
Mongondow: a Philippine language in Indonesia
Mongondow speakers are situated in the North Sulawesi and Gorontalo provinces, which occupy the long, narrow peninsula that juts out from the northern portion of the major Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It belongs to the Austronesian language family, like most indigenous languages in Indonesia, but it finds itself on the Philippine branch of the family, more closely related to the languages of the Philippines than most other languages in Indonesia. Mongondow has, however, sustained influence from Manado Malay, as well as Indonesian and the Papuan language of Ternate.
Regarding grammar, Mongondow employs a verb-initial word order, as is common among Philippine languages. Both verb-subject-object and verb-object-subject are possible, and strong influences from Indonesian and Manado Malay have led to increased adoption of a subject-verb-object word order. Mongondow’s verbs undergo inflection to indicate tense and aspect, which are absent from Indonesian, and they also feature the quintessential “trigger system” found in most Philippine and Indonesian languages, where verbs are inflected to place focus on a particular constituent of the sentence (subject, object, etc.). Another feature Mongondow shares with many other Austronesian languages is first-person plural clusivity—the language has one pronoun for “you and I” and another for “I and other people but not you.” The nuance that such features add to Mongondow can present challenges to translators, but don’t worry: we only hire native speakers who are experienced with Mongondow translation.
We offer Mongondow translation services of all kinds.
What kind of Mongondow translation services are you looking for? Our goal is to accommodate your specific requests to the best of our ability—which is why we’ve put together a diverse and well-rounded team of native-speaking Mongondow translators. Our translators grew up in different parts of North Sulawesi and Gorontalo, speaking different dialects of Mongondow—but what they share is a love for their language and a passion for translating both to and from Mongondow.
We’ve also done our best to hire translators who have experience in different types of translation services. So, although Mongondow is an endangered minority language, we can help you with academic translation, business translation, literary translation, and even localization. If you’re a researcher, let us help you translate your interview transcripts or research surveys. If you’re an entrepreneur, let us help you translate your business proposals or advertisement copy. If you’re an author, let us help you grow your audience—whether that means moving into northern Sulawesi or branching out from it. And if you’d like a Mongondow translator with expertise in a particular field, simply let us know—that’s how robust our team is!
Our Mongondow translators are excited to help you. Take the plunge and order our Mongondow translation services today!