Not everyone in Guatemala speaks Spanish. Indeed, most of the population does, clocking in at around 93%—but that means, of course, that 7% of Guatemalans don’t speak Spanish. Furthermore, those unfamiliar with Guatemalan demographics may be surprised to learn that only around 54% of Guatemalans are reported as being native speakers of Spanish. A whopping 46% of the country speaks an indigenous language as their first language, the vast majority of these people speaking a Mayan language, such as Poqomchi’.
The Guatemalan government promotes the teaching and learning of indigenous languages and has even set up the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala to work toward revitalizing the country’s 21 Mayan languages, including Poqomchi’. However, Poqomchi’ and its cousin languages remain under the threat of Spanish, which is spoken around the country as a lingua franca and is generally seen as more prestigious. That’s why it’s so difficult to find Poqomchi’ translation services. But we at TranslationServices.com are proud to serve this important Mayan language by compiling a professional team of Poqomchi’ translators ready to translate all sorts of content to and from their language.
You can see a quote for our Poqomchi’ translation services for free by shooting us a message today.
Poqomchi’: an entirely different world from English
Poqomchi’ is spoken in the Guatemalan departments of Alta Verapaz (Santa Cruz Verapaz, San Cristobál Verapaz, Tactic, Tamahú, Tucurú), Baja Verapaz (Purulhá), and Quiché (Chicamán), which are located in the northern central area of the country. The 2019 census found around 130,000 speakers of the language—notably, 40,000 of them are reported to be monolingual. This gives Poqomchi’ a more stable foundation than many other Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala.
Poqomchi’ is a synthetic, mostly agglutinative language closely related to Poqomam, spoken further south. However, nouns undergo little inflection, with verbal inflection much more complex. Regarding nominal inflection, possessive affixes are appended to nouns to denote possession, and certain nouns—generally body parts or kinship terms—must always be possessed. Verbs, on the other hand, are inflected via a large set of affixes indicating both the subject and object (making independent pronouns redundant), aspect, and mood. Poqomchi’ usually constructs sentences with the verb at the beginning of the sentence, which is typical for Mayan languages.
Our Poqomchi’ translators are aware of how complicated their language is for European language speakers, and they’re passionate about translating to and from it to meet a variety of needs.
We want to translate Poqomchi’ for you
There are a number of reasons why you might want to purchase Poqomchi’ translation services, and our goal is to serve you no matter what your reason is. That’s why we’ve carefully selected our Poqomchi’ translation team to work with translation projects both to and from Poqomchi’. Those seeking translation services from Poqomchi’ may have historical documents, Poqomchi’-language literature, or notes that they would like to share more widely. Those looking for translation services into Poqomchi’ may want to reach the Poqomchi’ people with academic surveys, cater to Poqomchi’ speakers with promotional business materials, or increase the amount of material available in Poqomchi’ by translating books, poems, websites, apps, games, and other creative material.
No matter why you need Poqomchi’ translation services, our team vows to be there for you. Reach out today, and let’s discuss how we can help you.