Long before the English and French colonized North America, countless indigenous languages were spoken widely across the continent, each language with a strong footing. Today, English is the dominant language in most parts of Canada and the United States, with French dominating in Quebec. But that doesn’t mean the indigenous languages have disappeared. They’re still spoken, even today, by minority groups around the continent. Ojibwe is a great example, constituting one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages in Canada and the US.
Ojibwe, which may also be known as its endonym Anishinaabemowin, is spoken in Eastern Canada and parts of the northern Midwest in the United States by an estimated 50,000 people. The language is made up of several dialects, but these are usually at least somewhat mutually intelligible, leading linguists to often classify them as dialects of a single Ojibwe language. Ojibwe is considered endangered, so few translation agencies will work with it—but at TranslationServices.com, we don’t think it’s right to deny the Ojibwe people of high-quality translation services. That’s why we put together a professional Ojibwe translation team.
Free quotes for our Ojibwe translation services are available via email—just reach out and ask for one.
Let’s discover what the Ojibwe language is like.
In Canada, Ojibwe is spoken primarily in Ontario but also in parts of Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In the US, it’s spoken in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. The Ojibwe people faced historical repression in both Canada and the US through the residential school system, but in the modern age, Ojibwe speakers are endeavoring to revitalize their language, particularly by teaching it to children. Different Ojibwe dialects use different orthographies, including sometimes the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics writing system.
As an Algonquin language, Ojibwe is related to other major indigenous languages in Canada, such as Cree and Mi’kmaq. It is a polysynthetic language with a great deal of inflection, and sometimes a single word can make up an entire sentence. It grammatically marks the animacy of words and includes a “fourth-person” pronoun to distinguish between multiple third-person referents. Ojibwe verbs are heavily inflected, marking the animacy, person, and number of both the subject and object. Verbs can come in four “modes”: indicative (neutral), dubitative (denotes uncertainty), preterit (denotes a past action or an attempted or intended but uncompleted action), and dubitative-preterit (denotes uncertainty about a past action).
Our Ojibwe translation services cover all kinds of translation needs.
Ojibwe isn’t an easy language for native English speakers to grasp—so reading the above description of Ojibwe grammar may intimidate many people. But our Ojibwe translators are native speakers who know precisely how to translate the nuances of Ojibwe into English—and, equally, how to translate all the nuances of English into Ojibwe. Are you a historian who wants to translate a historical document from Ojibwe to English? Would you like to translate traditional Ojibwe literature into English to share with your non-Ojibwe-speaking compatriots? Are you a researcher looking to translate questionnaires into Ojibwe to survey Ojibwe-speaking communities? Do you want to translate creative content like books, poetry, games, websites, and apps into Ojibwe to increase speakers’ opportunities to use it and help learners immerse themselves in the language in an enjoyable way? Our translation team can help with all these use cases and more.
Reach out to us today if you’d like Ojibwe translation services—all you have to do is tell us what you want. “TranslationServices.com was able to locate an Ojibwe speaker in the dialect I required for the manuscript I was working on. I am very pleased with the translation I received. The service was prompt and within the timeframe I required. Many thanks for your professionalism.”
— Marke Henteleff, Edmonton, Alberta