Quechua translation services

Professional Quechua Translation Service

Quechua refers to a group of Native American languages with a common ancestor spoken mainly in the Andes region of South America. It is also known as “runa simi” by some speakers. The Quechua language family originated from Proto-Quechua. It is the most popularly used language family among Native Americans with number of speakers ranging anywhere between 6 to 8 million. The language family has official status in Bolivia and Peru.

Tomedes works with many professional Quechua translation experts who are suitably qualified and experienced. Our team of Quechua translators specializes in translating between Quechua and a variety of languages including Quechua to English and English to Quechua translation.

• Quechua languages family exists in large zones of dialect continua and it's difficult to identify independent or specific languages within the family. Broadly, three major regions have been distinguished on the basis of specific Quechua langauges-

• Ecuador Quechua ('Quichua' or 'Kichwa') – This is spoken in the Amazon and the highlands and also in certain pockets of Amazonian Peru and Southern Colombia.

• Central Quechua – It is spoken in the highlands in the region stretching from the Ancash to Huancayo in north-central Peru.

• Southern Quechua – This has the largest number of speakers. It is spoken in the highlands lying further south. Southern Quechua can be found in the area between Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Cuzco and Puno regions of Peru. They are also found in many parts of Bolivia, as well as some areas in north-western Argentina.

• Although there are some significant differences in the way Quechua language are spoken locally in the above regions, speakers belonging to different regions share a comfortable level of mutual intelligibility. At the same time communication difficulties do exist in the context of Huancayo Quechua which has distinct characteristics that even Central Quechua speakers have difficulty comprehending. Meanwhile speakers from different major regions like Central and Southern Quechua face some difficulties in effective communication.

• Quechua languages vary in a complex and progressive manner across the dialect continua. This makes it impossible to identify the exact number Quechua languages or dialects. 

• Quechua languages did not have any writing system before the Spanish conquest of Peru. After the arrival of the Spanish, the Roman alphabet was adopted for writing Quechua. It was written using Spanish based orthography till the 20th century. A new orthography was adopted in 1975 by the Peruvian government which was also preferred by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua.

• Quechua and Spanish have mixed significantly over time resulting in the existence of hundreds of Spanish loanwords in Quechua and vice versa. Quechua also shares significant amount of its vocabulary and structure with the Aymara language. 

• Many Quechua loanwords have also found their way into English through the Spanish language. Coca, condor, quinine, puma and guano are some such words.

Quechua translation services offered at Tomedes includes specialized translation like business translation, literary translation, technical translation and medical translation among others. We guarantee very high quality document translation services for significantly low rates. Our automated process ensures smooth and fast processing of all language translation jobs. To know the best rate for you project please request an instant translation quote from the top menu. We will be happy to answer any other queries you might have, just drop in a line here.