msjohns615 (asker) Jul 3, 2010:

Not going to capitalize it in the end... I did hear back from the person I'm doing these translations for, and she said non-capitalization was fine...Thanks to everyone for the input.

Muriel Vasconcellos (X) Jul 3, 2010:

'Indigenous' is too generic Unlike 'Indian', 'indigenous' can be the native people of any place in the world. It's almost on a par with 'local'.

msjohns615 (asker) Jul 1, 2010:

Sorry! Ellen, I'm really grateful for the explanations, I've at least learned that from a conventional point of view, there's really no question here that indigenous should not be capitalized. I'll take my specific question to the person who will be using these translations, and make sure that I'm doing right by her needs. Considering the way that we capitalize Native American, or Asian, for example, I wish Indigenous were capitalized as a way of recognizing this broad ethnic designation, because it appears a whole bunch of times in my work, and it doesn't look right to me lower-cased. Really, though, thanks for taking the time to lend your opinion, sorry if I came off as confrontational, that's not at all my intent.

Ellen Kraus Jun 30, 2010:

I cant help feeling that you misinterpreted part of our explanations. Nobody would deny the necessity of capitalizing Afro-American social structures.

msjohns615 (asker) Jun 30, 2010:

In articles that present and analyze new models of democratic education that respect originary peoples and their cultural and social belief systems, I do think it's quite important. I mean, imagine if I wrote a whole article about African-American social structures and didn't capitalize African-American. That would be disrespectful (and wrong), and I'm worried about the same thing here. I mean, capitalization can be seen as a way of conferring respect to ethnic groups and the terms they've chosen to identify themselves by. And at this point the whole discussion has piqued my interest...

Ellen Kraus Jun 30, 2010:

I understand you are worrying, but is it really worthwhile to attibute so much importance to this issue ? I am sure that the opinions of experts ready to take a stance will widely differ, those of linguists, IMO, will clash with the most probably differing views of sociologists. the result, I guess, will in any case be unsatisfactory.

msjohns615 (asker) Jun 30, 2010:

Duly noted Ellen, molte grazie per il suo aiuto...I think that goes to the root of my concern: considering the subject matter of the project, I'm curious about the current stance of social scientists regarding capitalization. I've found a lot of discussions on the issue, but no definitive stance. From my non-expert point of view, it seems that we capitalize races such as Asian or Hispanic, and we capitalize the term Native American when we use it in the same sense that I'm using indigenous here...so that seems like a pretty good justification for moving toward capitalization. For real, though, I'd love an expert in the field to give me the contemporary academic stance on this issue of terminology, because I've been stressing about it for quite a while.

Ellen Kraus Jun 30, 2010:

with regard to the link you quote: I would say una rondine non fa primavera" . It is a recommendation which has not as yet been materialized.

msjohns615 (asker) Jun 30, 2010:

Thanks to all for the help! I'm probably just going to ask the person to whom I'm submitting these translations what she wants me to do with this word. Nobody's really stood up for capitalization, but I'm not convinced that non-capitalization wouldn't be disrespectful in this case. Here's a link to a message I found on Google that references Canada's position on the issue: [email protected]/msg00053.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ms... this email message quotes: "In 1994, the Government of Canada Terminology and Language Standardization Board (Public Works) made the following recommendation with respect to general references to Aboriginal people(s) in Canada. Aboriginal and Native should be capitalized to parallel other broad ethnic, linguistic and geographic designations such as Asian, Hispanic and Nordic. Aboriginal and Native should be used as adjectives only, as in "Aboriginal peoples' and "Native peoples" (not "Aboriginals", "Natives"). Indigenous should also be capitalized the term Indigenous peoples, which is often used to refer to Aboriginal groups worldwide." So there's some evidence that capitalization is considered appropriate as well. Thoughts?

Evans (X) Jun 30, 2010:

I think it is better to translate indígena in your sample text as indigenous, otherwise it is an overtranslation. And it should definitely not be capitalised in my view

Ellen Kraus Jun 30, 2010:

then, the situation is different; because unlike indigeneous, Amerindian clearly denotes a nationality, the Amerinds or the Amerindians. Here, capitalization is necessary; you can use it as a noun or adjective. both are capitalized. you would do the same with the English and the English language.

msjohns615 (asker) Jun 29, 2010:

Amerindian? Would Amerindian perhaps be the appropriate term here? The article is about Bolivia, and I've gone back and forth between capitalizing and not capitalizing Indigenous. In looking at the Wikipedia article for Bolivia, the section on demographics states: "Bolivia's ethnic distribution is estimated to be 30% Quechua-speaking and 25% Aymara-speaking Amerindians." If I use Amerindian, the phrase "los pueblos indígenas de Bolivia" becomes "the Amerindian peoples of Bolivia." How does this sound?

Monica Colangelo Jun 29, 2010:

not a nationality While African-Americans is a compound form where two nationalities are mentioned (and as such they are capitalized) the word indigenous is not a nationality and thus should not be capitalized.

msjohns615 (asker) Jun 29, 2010:

further specifics I´m just concerned about the fact that, in this case, the article speaks of ethnic groups' self-denomination as "Indigenous." I feel that in similar cases, self-denominated "African-Americans" or "Native Americans," or people of any nationality or ethnic group for that matter, would find the non-capitalization of their group to be offensive. I understand what the folks who replied are saying, but I'm still concerned about the political correctness of not capitalizing the word Indigenous when it is the name chosen by a group of peoples to represent their unique ethnic backgrounds. In many cases, indigenous is more of an umbrella term. But it's an umbrella term that's been appropriated by these ethnic groups to refer to themselves, making the situation similar to that of "Native American" here in the USA. Hence my doubts...any thoughts on this?