By Sarah-Claire Jordan
Armenia is a country that has gone through a lot during the over 4,000 years it has existed as a nation. Yes, that means it was around long before Christianity and a few other religions even existed. Its ancient history sheds light on early civilizations, from wineries to shoe making. It also served as an integral juncture between Central Asia and the Middle East, making it vulnerable to outside rule, which happened often. Speakers of many different languages from the Russian, Arab, Mongol, Persian, Macedonian, and Greek empires found work in Armenian translation, so multilingual trade is nothing new in Armenia.
Its modern history is not for the faint of heart, with massacres, genocides, and occupations contributing to a massive Armenian diaspora. In fact, there are more Armenians living outside of the country than inside it, so that gives you a good idea of what to expect in terms of the scale of this diaspora. As a result of the genocide of 1915, Armenians fled and settled throughout Central Asia, Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina. Some have managed to continue speaking their native language and passed it down to the next generations, but for many it is lost.
Despite so many setbacks, Armenia has showed signs of the business and technology potential that it has. First, the capital city of Yerevan is full of engineers and businesspeople who are ready to jump on any opportunity to create new businesses and technology. Just like in many other countries, there are government incentives in Armenia with the goal of promoting more tech and business growth. This is something we all must be aware of and take into consideration when discussing Armenian translation in general, but specifically for business and technology.
The main challenges that an Armenian translator will face have to do with the fact that the target audience, those who speak Armenian natively, is so scattered. Yes, one could say that this is also the case for many other languages, but given the problems that Armenia as a country has had to face, and still faces, it makes localization tricky at best. In order to localize properly, a translator must figure out where it is the target audience now resides, what part of Armenia they may have originally come from (to figure out which regional dialect to use), and then translate and localize accordingly. This is not a simple task by any means.
In terms of Armenian to English translation, the issue is the opposite. The source content would have to come from Armenia or another country with a high number of Armenian speakers, enough to warrant creating Armenian content in the first place. This will get easier, hopefully, once there are more businesses and companies established in Armenia that need to export their services or globalize. Until then, however, the life of an Armenian translator is a bit limited in terms of what kinds of content they can work with.