Spanish may be the official language and lingua franca of Guatemala, but to call Guatemala simply a “Spanish-speaking country” is to ignore the diverse plethora of indigenous languages spoken widely across the country. Indeed, close to half of Guatemalans speak an indigenous language as their first language—by far the highest proportion in Central America. The majority of these languages are Mayan, like Chuj, spoken in the country’s northwest, with a small concentration of speakers in Mexico.
The Guatemalan government is friendly toward indigenous languages, with the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala working to revitalize and preserve the country’s Mayan languages. However, Chuj is still considered endangered, and the high prestige and widespread use of Spanish in the country limits Chuj usage. That’s why most translation firms don’t bother with Chuj. TranslationServices.com is different—we understand that Chuj is an important language. That’s why we present our Chuj translation services with the utmost pride.
Anyone interested in Chuj translation services can message us now and ask about a free quote.
What makes Chuj unique?
Chuj is the native language of around 60,000 people in Guatemala—notably the municipalities of San Mateo Ixtatán, San Sebastián Coatán and Nentón in the department of Huehuetenango. An additional roughly 4,000 speakers reside in Mexico’s Chiapas state. Like all Mayan languages, Chuj is grammatically complex and difficult for those used to European languages to learn and translate.
Chuj verbs can grow quite long because of the high degree of inflection they undergo, being marked for aspect as well as the person and number of both the subject and object. However, the subject/object distinction is not as simple as an English speaker may think, since Chuj is an ergative–absolutive language. That means the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb both take the absolutive prefix, while the ergative prefix is reserved for the subject of a transitive verb. The ergative affixes also change depending on whether the verb starts with a consonant or a vowel.
Chuj also uses classifiers that divide nouns into certain classes, largely based on what kind of material they’re made of. These classifiers can then function as articles or pronouns, and since there are separate classifiers for “male” and “female,” they can even indicate the gender of a human noun. But don’t worry about all of Chuj’s complexity, because our Chuj translators can easily navigate the language’s challenges.
Chuj translations for anyone in any subject
We proudly translate Chuj, with services both to and from the language. This ensures we’re able to cover a diverse range of translation needs, helping those invested in the Chuj language both spread Chuj culture and knowledge to other people as well as increase the amount of material in Chuj. For example, you could hire us to translate a historical document in Chuj or a story—either traditional or contemporary—to share with English speakers. Alternatively, you could work with us to translate business material, academic works or surveys, or entertainment content (books, games, websites, apps, poems, and more) into Chuj. Our Chuj translators are here for whatever you need.
We offer Chuj translation services available for any purpose—message us now to get started!