Quechua has carved out a special name for itself: it’s the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas. Quechua was the primary language of the expansive Inca Empire that ruled northwestern South America until the arrival of the Europeans, but even today, the language continues to thrive, spoken by as many as 25% of Peruvians. Of course, most Quechuan speakers also learn Spanish to communicate with others in their South American countries, but that doesn’t mean Quechua isn’t alive and well at home.
An estimated 8 to 10 million people speak a Quechuan language as their native language, with many Quechuan speakers concentrated in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Smaller numbers can also be found in Argentina and Colombia. Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador have even granted “official language” status to the proud indigenous language, and education in Quechua is encouraged, although the lack of written materials poses a considerable obstacle. In this vein, translation services between Quechua and English are also scarce, which is why we at TranslationServices.com decided to take matters into our own hands. With our professional Quechua translation team, we’re proud to offer Quechua translation services.
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Want to learn more about the fascinating language of Quechua?
Quechua is an important aspect of South American culture. Spoken predominantly in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, Quechua speakers can also be found in Argentina, Colombia, and Chile. While most indigenous languages of the Americas have faced a history of heavy repression, resulting in extremely low numbers of speakers today, Quechua has flourished in part due to Spanish encouraging its use at the beginning of their colonization, at least until the Peruvian struggle for independence in the 1780s.
Quechua, called Runasimi (“people’s language”) by native speakers, constitutes a language family of its own, with several close but not necessarily mutually intelligible languages forming a continuum. It’s an agglutinative language with heavy inflection, featuring a whopping 18 noun cases. Quechua distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (i.e., it has two words for “we” depending on whether the listener is included). One more defining feature of Quechuan languages is evidentiality, wherein suffixes indicating the source of information are appended to words. There are three key levels of evidentiality: direct evidence, inference, and hearsay.
Don’t worry if Quechua sounds complicated—it’s not for our professional Quechua translators, who speak the language natively!
To or from Quechua—we offer both!
Whether you’re seeking translation services from English to Quechua or from Quechua to English, our Quechua translation team is here to serve you. With experienced professional translators in both directions, we can help you even in specialized scenarios, such as translating historical documents written in Quechua to English. If you want to translate traditional (or contemporary) literature from Quechua, we’d be happy to help with that as well. In the opposite direction, we’re available to translate business content for companies looking to cater to Quechua speakers, as well as pedagogical material for those hoping to further educational initiatives in Quechua. We also translate fun content like books, apps, games, websites, poetry, and more—whatever you need translated to or from Quechua, we’re here for you.
Why not reach out today to get started with your first Quechua translation project?