AATI’s track record supporting Indigenous languages

Since 2014, the Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Intérpretes (AATI) has been organising activities, building alliances, and developing projects with members of Indigenous communities in Argentina and throughout Latin America, aiming to strengthen and professionalise translation and interpreting work for Indigenous language speakers, improve their access to rights, and fight for social justice.

As translation and interpreting are essential to guaranteeing linguistic, social, civil, political, and cultural rights in linguistically diverse contexts, AATI believes that, particularly with Indigenous languages, they can also be powerful tools for starting to question the unequal relationships that colonialism has supported.

Through AATI’s Indigenous Languages Committee and Copyright Translation Committee, and thanks to the selfless, ongoing, and steady support of collaborators, researchers, native speakers, and translators within and outside of Argentina, over the last 10 years, we have been able to shed a little more light on the existence, importance, vitality, and need to revive Indigenous languages and their corresponding cultures, while expanding opportunities for social and workplace integration for those who speak, teach, translate, and interpret those languages.

 

We have organised in-person and online talks and workshops, professional and academic seminars and conferences, international meetings, book presentations, performances on International Translation Day, and bilingual publications, and participated in the Buenos Aires International Book Fair. In many cases, we had the cooperation or support of institutions such as the University of East Anglia, UK Research and Innovation, the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia, FIT (through FIT LatAm), Fundación El Libro, Centro de Estudios del Lenguaje y Sociedad (CELES, Universidad Nacional de San Martín), Asociación Colombiana de Traductores, Terminólogos e Intérpretes (ACTTI), the Brazilian Association for Translators and Interpreters (ABRATES), PEN Argentina, the Organisation of Indigenous People from the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), and the Caro y Cuervo Institute. We have posted comprehensive information about these events on our website.

As a translator and an activist for the recognition our profession deserves, I am proud to have been a member of both committees and the liaison between them since they were founded (in 2012 the Copyright Translation Committee and 2014 the Indigenous Languages Committee). I am happy and grateful to AATI for its generosity and for always being open to new proposals, and I thank my colleagues for letting me join them on their difficult journey towards achieving our goals. We know there is still a lot to do, and we plan to keep moving forwards, but we have been and continue to be very pleased with what we have achieved so far through our shared love and hard work.

We will continue to protect, create, and meet up. AATI’s doors are open to new proposals for collaboration from individuals or institutions. You can write to us at loriginarias@aati.org.ar.

Estela Consigli, AATI

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