There has been a subtle yet remarkable shift in the world of translation and interpretation services over the last few years. While Spanish, Mandarin, and French still account for the bulk of translation and interpreting work, requests for rare and indigenous languages are on the rise. Courts, hospitals, schools, NGOs, and local governments increasingly need linguists for languages that mainstream machine translation simply can’t reliably cover.
What’s behind the shift? Several forces are converging. Increased migration and refugee flows bring speakers of less common tongues to cities across the United States and Europe, and those communities need legal, medical, and social services in their native languages.
In addition, humanitarian crises and public-health campaigns also require accurate communication in local languages. While machine translation tools have undoubtedly improved over recent years, they often don’t exist for these lesser-spoken languages, so human linguists remain essential. At the same time, a growing cultural and political push to preserve minority languages has created more translation work for education, along with archive services and resources for communities themselves.
Two examples that illustrate this trend are Akateko and Purépecha, rare languages spoken by small communities with rich traditions and histories.
Akateko: a Mayan voice that needs hearing
Akateko (sometimes written Acateco) is a Mayan language spoken primarily in the highlands of Guatemala, parts of Southern Mexico, and by diaspora communities in the United States, notably in California and Florida. It’s a language with a strong oral tradition and complex grammar – two features that machine-translation systems don’t cope with well.
In recent years, demand for Akateko interpreters has increased in immigration courts, social services, and community health settings, where accurate, culturally aware communication can be a matter of legal integrity or medical safety. Providers and platforms are beginning to list Akateko on their databases, but experienced, certified Akateko translators remain scarce.
The practical impact is immediate: without a qualified Akateko interpreter, vital information can be lost or misinterpreted during interviews, medical consultations, or legal hearings. That’s why some NGOs and court systems are investing in training native speakers, building glossaries, and creating better workflows to connect speakers with remote interpreters. But the pipeline is still fragile – it takes time to find and vet professionals who can work to the standards required by courts and hospitals.
Moreover, while there are ample translation and interpretation agencies to choose from, relatively few have specialized Akateko linguists with the knowledge and experience to cater to these relatively new demands – not to mention the skills to mediate between the different cultures involved.
Purépecha: a linguistic curiosity
Purépecha, an indigenous language of Michoacán in Mexico, has a long cultural history and a committed speaker community. Interest in Purépecha translation and interpreting is growing for several reasons: migration to the US, local cultural preservation projects, and the expanding needs of legal and medical services that must accommodate patients who are more comfortable discussing sensitive matters in their native tongue.
This language has been a source of fascination to linguists over the years. It’s a language isolate, meaning there are no known linguistic relatives. It’s also rich in unusual features, and it stands apart from other languages spoken in the region. For instance, many words are polysyllabic, creating a melodic, sing-song effect when spoken.
As with Akateko, it’s hard to find reliable professional translators and interpreters, meaning informal, ad hoc solutions are often found – with variable levels of success.
That’s not to diminish the importance of community-led initiatives; they’ve played a crucial role in enabling communication. Paired with investment by local organizations in training and certification, these efforts can significantly raise the standard of language services in the community.
How attitudes toward rare languages are changing
There’s also a growing awareness among buyers: rather than treating every translation as a commodity, courts and hospitals are learning to budget for rare-language support and to plan ahead for interpreter booking. That cultural change – recognizing translation as essential infrastructure – is one of the most hopeful signs for minority-language communities.
In addition, some translation agencies – including Capital Linguists – are investing in rare languages, ensuring these vulnerable tongues are preserved for future generations. Rapid digitalization has resulted in a drift toward dominant languages online, where English and Spanish increasingly set the default for web content and social platforms.
As speakers switch to these major languages for convenience, education, and work, minority tongues lose everyday domains and risk being used only in private or ceremonial contexts unless targeted digital content and community spaces are created.
The structural challenges of rare-language work
Several recurring obstacles make rare-language assignments harder than mainstream work:
First of all, there is a much, much smaller talent pool. Very few people have the combination of native fluency, translation training, and sector-specific knowledge (legal, medical, technical).
Secondly, there is little or even no machine support. Most rare languages lack the corpora needed to train reliable machine-translation models. That keeps work human-intensive and costly.
There’s also the issue of dialects and orthography. Variants and limited standardization mean a document translated for one community might confuse another.
These issues add time, expense, and operational difficulties, which is why it can be best managed by specialist suppliers and skilled project managers who coordinate community consultation and quality checks.
Capital Linguists’ rare language support: From Akateko translators to Purépecha language experts
At Capital Linguists, we understand that fluency alone is not enough. Moreover, as improvements in machine translation have sometimes led to a decline in human translation requests, we’ve always maintained that humans make the best translators – whatever the language pair. That’s why we continuously invest in CPD, specialist training and mentoring, so our linguists retain and develop the skills needed for complex, high-stakes assignments that machine systems simply could not handle. We also operate a 24-hour telephone interpreting hotline, which is especially important for rare-language services in remote or off-grid regions with poor internet coverage.
With a minimum of five years’ interpreting experience, our linguists are trained to handle the particular challenges of rare languages. Our ISO 17100 and ISO 9001 credentials demonstrate that recruitment, confidentiality, and quality assurance are built into everything we do. For specialist projects involving minority-language communities – we’d love to hear about your project!
