Translators’ perspectives: The Construction of the Peruvian Indigenous Languages Act in Indigenous Languages

The aim of this article is to examine critically the communicative interface between the State and the indigenous population of Peru through the practice of inter-lingual translation. It focuses on the translation of a piece of legislation, namely, the Indigenous Languages Act (2011), from Spanish into the wide range of Amerindian languages spoken across the Andes and Amazonia. Our specific object of study is the strategic behaviour of the indigenous translators, as described by themselves, when communicating the State’s norms contained in the Indigenous Languages Act to their peoples. Thus, we will depart from text-analytical models and favour, instead, an approach based on the translators’ perceptions of their role and on their rationale for the solutions that were chosen to overcome the challenges posed by the source text.
In order to meet our aim, we will firstly explore issues relevant to the translation of legislation and comment on the problems that arise from legal translation in a postcolonial, multicultural setting such as Peru. Secondly, we will provide an analysis of five translations of the Languages Act based on retrospective Think Aloud Protocols (TAPs) conducted with the translators. Finally, we will discuss the findings derived from our analysis.