Translation at Native Bound Unbound
Developing a Standard
The translation standards used by Native Bound Unbound were not inherited wholesale from any existing digital archive. They were designed deliberately and iteratively under the direction of Dr. Aaron Taylor, drawing on extensive comparative study and collaborative refinement among the NBU team. Translation at NBU operates across the multilingual record of the Americas. Our current protocols encompass Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English, each governed by its own guide but united by these three shared goals.
- Readability
- Consistency of translation
- Historical integrity
From this foundation emerged an NBU model that is both rigorous and flexible. It follows the scholarly precision of academic editions while addressing the ethical and linguistic complexities of translating records of Indigenous slavery. Every element—from the handling of marginalia and scribal corrections to the standardization of place names and the treatment of caste or ethnolinguistic terms—was debated and refined through research and collaboration. The result is a living standard: transparent enough for verification, yet adaptable to various historical archives.
Translation Norms
In an effort to increase readability, consistency, and historical integrity, NBU translators, researchers and transcribers, decided on these norms of translation.
- Translations conform to modern English writing standards.
- Punctuation should be added in accordance with modern norms.
- Line breaks are NOT maintained in translations.
- Breaks between images or pages are maintained.
- The use of parentheses (^ ) and brackets [^ ] to indicate minor scribal insertions and deletions or editorial deletions and insertions ( ) [ ] that are present in the transcriptions usually do not need to be reproduced in the translation. This includes brackets for reconstructions.
- However, significant insertions or deletions should be maintained with the parenthesis or brackets. This goes especially for insertions of date information in a record or information which may be relevant to the connection to the enslaved. For example, if a priest forgot to put the name of the baptized person and adds it in later, we keep those scribal insertions in the translation.
- All information enclosed in curly brackets, such as marginalia, should be maintained.
Each transcription language has an internal guide where translations of commonly used terms and phrases have been standardized. These guides establish equivalent frameworks for rendering documents into English while maintaining the integrity of the source language.
Readers of NBU translations will notice that some terms are not translated directly. This decision was made when no direct translation exists, where the meaning of term changed over time, or when translation may mask nuances.
The linguistic horizon of NBU continues to expand. Work is now underway to extend these methods to Dutch and Italian colonial records, and to begin careful engagement with Indigenous languages represented in the archives. This includes developing respectful approaches to translation, consultation, and, when appropriate, co-translation with Indigenous language speakers and cultural authorities. The aim is not only to decode words but to recover meaning systems that colonial texts sought to suppress or erase.
Implementation
As with transcriptions, each translation carried out by NBU goes through several reviews by various members of the translation teams. These subteams often focus on certain languages or record types, such as burials, baptisms, marriages, or legal and narrative documents. This helps ensure a high degree of consistency in the translation. Teams are organized by language, each led by senior translators and reviewers trained in paleography and early modern documentary forms. Every document proceeds through a shared workflow of intial translation, review by two or more team members, revision, and final review. This workflow creates a system of checks and dialogue that treats translation not as a single act but as a continuum of interpretation, verification, and shared learning.
Ethical Commitments
For NBU, translation is both a technical process and a moral responsibility. Translators approach each record as a fragment of lived experience, often the only surviving trace of an Indigenous person recorded through colonial eyes. Their task is not to correct the violence of the archive, but to reveal it with precision and care—to make visible what was once obscured, while honoring the humanity of those named or unnamed within the text.
By establishing clear standards, cultivating multilingual teams, and embracing continuous revision, Native Bound Unbound transforms translation into an instrument of restorative scholarship—recovering meaning, context, and memory across the hemispheric languages of bondage and resistance.
