Zoque interpreting and translation

Zoque interpreting across Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tabasco

Zoque has several variants, and the Chiapas and Chimalapa varieties differ considerably. Please give us the client's town or, where relevant, their family's place of origin. The eruption of the El Chichón volcano displaced many Zoque communities in Chiapas, and some families resettled elsewhere in the state, so a speaker may live far from the village whose variety they speak.

Many Zoque speakers are bilingual in Spanish, and younger people in some areas speak mainly Spanish, so we confirm the client's preference. When Zoque is needed, we usually work by video, through the SILA Linguists® app or your conferencing platform, with Spanish relay into English; telephone interpreting can be arranged at any hour. Legal and medical appointments are interpreted consecutively, and the client may ask for a female or male interpreter. For families resettled after the eruption, we ask about the village their parents or grandparents came from.

Zoque translation and certified translation

Zoque is written in the Latin alphabet, with conventions that include letters such as ʉ or ü for a central vowel, and spelling differs between variants and publishers. We confirm the variant and conventions with you before translating health information, school materials or consultation documents, and test that special characters display correctly.

Official documents from Mexico are in Spanish. We translate them into English and certify the translation with a signed statement of accuracy, recognised and accepted by UK authorities such as the courts and the Home Office, and equally by universities and employers.

Transcription for consultations and documentation

Environmental and community consultations in the Chimalapas forests and the Zoque areas of Chiapas generate recorded meetings and interviews that must be reported accurately. We provide time-coded Zoque transcripts with an English or Spanish version, label each speaker and language, and flag uncertain passages for review. Oral histories of resettlement after El Chichón can be transcribed and subtitled in the same way.

Sectors we support in Zoque

Our vetted, trained and qualified Zoque linguists can support health services, courts and legal advisers, schools, environmental organisations, energy and engineering companies and community consultations. SILA Linguists® assigns one coordinator to each project, and every linguist signs a confidentiality agreement and follows UK GDPR.