Originary languages of various societies in the world, which coexist with societies and languages that developed writing thousands of years ago, do not have or did not have writing until very recently. The very fact of endowing / endowing them with writing, generally phonetic writing, requires many adjustments between sound and spelling, since in world’s languages sounds differ very much between each other, but at the same time, what counts is convention, because it is necessary to agree so that everyone accepts to write those sounds with those spellings.

Once you have writing, you can fix the contents of your own culture such as worldview, knowledge of nature, and social institutions, which has a wonderful effect on strengthening a language and culture. related to it, as long as its speakers are keen users of the written language.

In addition, you can also acquire and fix contents from other cultures to learn more about the world and take advantage of the knowledge that other cultures have been producing throughout their history. This also has a wonderful effect, as long as the entry of these new cultures does not occur under the sign of domination and dispossession.

Translation between languages with an ancient written tradition is somewhat more balanced than translation between languages where one has an ancient written tradition and the other is just taking its first steps in writing. Apart from this, translation between languages that have a long written tradition, but are also related languages such as Spanish and Italian, for example, is easier than between two languages that have a long written tradition, but that are not directly related, such as Spanish and Swedish, for example, and even more so between unrelated languages, such as Spanish and Chinese.

So, it is worth asking the question we asked in our first publication: how is translation between languages such as English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian different from translation between English and Navajo or between Spanish and Aymara, or between French and Swahili?

In that translation between a language with a long written tradition and an originary language combines the difficulty of linguistic separation–there is no relationship of kinship between English and Shipibo Konibo-, the difficulty of cultural difference –Swahili culture does not share many elements with Scandinavian culture-, and asymmetry of power between languages -Spanish was and still is a language of domination over Quechua-.

If we want to realize the noblest goal of translation, which is understanding and communication between human beings of different cultures and different languages, we have to take into account this triple backdrop of separation, strangeness and domination to turn them into closeness, familiarity and fraternity.