anada is home to some 70 indigenous languages, including Innu, Inuktitut, Abenaki, and Cree. According to the 2021 Canadian census, approximately 237,000 people speak an indigenous language at a conversational level.
Indigenous linguistic vitality is currently a large-scale undertaking in Canada, prompted by the 2019 Indigenous Languages Act, which aims to preserve and promote these native languages. The law is part of a nationwide effort driven by the Truth and Reconciliation With Indigenous Peoples initiative, which has brought Canadians an awareness of their country’s painful history of oppression and rallied them to action.
In this context of revitalization, the Canadian language industry takes center stage, quickly calling on native speakers and translators to meet the needs of its clients. But in an officially bilingual country, is there a real market for indigenous translation, bearing in mind the limited number of people actually using it? And how can the industry best provide the needed services, given the low-resource nature of underrepresented languages?
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The 2019 Indigenous Languages Act marked a turning point for language revitalization, particularly with the appointment of a Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. But it isn’t the only law making a difference.
“Steps in the right direction must be highlighted,” explains Karine Millaire, a committed citizen of the Huron-Wendat Nation and a professor of indigenous law at the Université de Montréal (UdeM).
Millaire says that initiatives at the provincial level are noteworthy, such as the enactment of the Mi’kmaw language as an original language of Nova Scotia in 2022. The law does not create a right to receive public services in Mi’kmaw; however, it ensures government support for its preservation, revitalization, promotion, and protection.
Millaire also notes that Canada is committed to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including Article 13 on the protection of native languages through the provision of interpretation services or other means. Courts are increasingly referencing it, and its implementation in legal precedents is visible, regardless of political intent.
“Indigenous peoples have a constitutional right to self-government and cultural rights, of which language is an integral part,” adds Millaire.
Requests for translation provide a revealing indication of how government agencies attach value to the preservation of indigenous languages. The interest vested in native languages is clearly perceptible: Many departments are not merely seeking to translate content, but also to increase information accessibility for indigenous communities as part of the recognition of their cultural identity.
Budgets for indigenous language services appear to be well-entrenched, if not stretchable — another indication of governmental commitment. Therefore, the biggest challenge for the industry is the lack of professionals trained for indigenous language transfer, rather than a lack of budget. Even if the professional rates charged are much higher than for other languages, the blatant lack of expert resources leaves a large gap in the cycle and the ability to move forward.
Facilitating the translation of Canadian indigenous languages calls for a whole new way of thinking, as well as the optimal management of scarce expert resources. For example, to maximize accessibility and the translation of content, some translators may opt to highlight the key points of a source text, or condense a target text, rather than translate a whole document.
Elvire Mekoudjou, a translator and project manager in Quebec, has advised countless clients — both governmental and private — in choosing the right indigenous target languages, content, and translation methods for their requirements. Mekoudjou explains that indigenous languages can be regarded as strategic according to two factors: volume (the number of native speakers) and geography (its presence in certain regions or provinces). According to Statistics Canada, the vitality index of a language is calculated on the basis of the average age of the speakers who count it as their mother tongue, with a lower number indicating a higher vitality.
Translator and Project Manager in Quebec
Professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal
Professor at the Université de Montréal
Professor at the Kiuna Institution
Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal
Derived from oral traditions, Canadian indigenous languages later acquired writing-based systems. Some languages, such as Algonquin, pose structural linguistic difficulty for translation. Lynn Drapeau, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal’s Department of Linguistics, explains, “In these polysynthetic languages where a single verb expresses a complete sentence, translation becomes complex.”
Moreover, lexical creations are often geared towards nature, natural materials, climate elements, or ecology, which have their own specific characteristics that are not easily translatable. This means more descriptive expressions become indispensable to render a concept. Distinctions are made between inanimate and animate; feminine, masculine, and neutral; and a host of other notable variations.
Compared with Canada’s official languages of English and French, which are both scriptural and grammatical, indigenous languages enjoy wide phonetic and linguistic diversity at a regional level and have undergone significant evolution as a result of family migrations across the Canadian and American territories. Other communication modes are also involved, such as native sign language, which comes with its own protocols.
According to Mekoudjou, a genuine desire for preservation can only go so far through translation. “Translating alone does not ensure the preservation of endangered languages; preserve, conserve, and revitalize are key words, but so is transmission,” she says.
In Canada, it is primarily the elderly who have mastery over native language skills, as transmission of indigenous languages to young people is not frequently occurring at home. “Children no longer always learn the language within the family circle,” says Yvette Mollen, an Associate Professor in UdeM’s Department of Linguistics and Translation. “Many parents are adopting the approach of integration of their children into the predominant communities of the Canadian provinces (either English or French).”
In this context, education plays a key role in indigenous language learning. Mollen, who teaches several Innu courses to cohorts of both native speakers and other interested students, believes that indigenous languages could be integrated into primary and secondary school classrooms. “Many topics taught in high school could very well be covered in the languages of young indigenous people, such as Innu,” said Mollen.
University programs on underrepresented languages are equally important. Philippe Charland, a geographer, historian, and professor of Abenaki language at the Kiuna Institution, says that many Abenakis join his class to relearn their language, alongside non-native speakers who simply display intellectual curiosity. However, these types of courses are few and far between.
“Course offerings are very limited, especially at the post-secondary level,” Charland says. “At university, only two languages are taught: Innu and Abenaki.”
Political intentions to develop educational and digital materials for teachers have been slow to materialize, and have sometimes been over-publicized compared to the results. It’s imperative that the pace of education resource development be stepped up.
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Underrepresented languages are almost always low on resources. This means that the volume of documentation available is so sparse that it hardly feeds databases that could be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which could then be used to offset the over-solicitation of both teachers and translators. Consequently, the inability to collect sufficient data may hinder the development of novel solutions. However, manuscript transcription is making headway, as thousands of handwritten pages, dictionaries, word lists, and other works are keyed into AI software.
Additionally, some initiatives, such as the First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR) project of the Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence (Mila), are tackling the challenge. Thanks to automatic speech recognition (ASR), speech AI enables the intergenerational transmission of languages. Learners also benefit from culturally significant immersive experiences.
In addition to official government projects, academic bodies have also taken action to study and analyze underrepresented languages to pave the way for their preservation, notably through automatic language processing. Some projects, such as the Awikhiganisaskak (Abenaki language data collection) initiative, have led to the digitization of content through transcription software.
Canada’s indigenous linguistic heritage — including both extinct and living languages — is in urgent need of preservation and must remain a priority. Happily, the tide is turning, step by step, towards the reclaiming of these languages.
Current legal avenues reaffirm that solutions lie in the legitimization of ancestral rights by the courts. Not only that, but education must be bolstered to ensure a pathway to university for native speakers and non-native speakers alike.
Finally, encouraging Canada’s younger generations, whether of indigenous descent or not, to access and learn these ancestral languages will hold the key to preservation within a conscious framework of rehabilitation. The future of language protection lies in empowering indigenous peoples with the autonomy and resources they need.
Dominique Bohbot is a language consultant and translation strategist at Nimdzi Insights, a market research and consulting company that specializes in language and localization. She is recognized for her expertise in the Canadian and Quebec markets.
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