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Ornithological Paper for Scientific Study: Spanish to English

Published with thanks to: ITESM and Pronatura Noroeste A.C. and also Nereyda Cruz.

source text, Spanish translation, English
1.1 INTRODUCCIÓN

La cotorra serrana occidental (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) (Figura 1) es una especie endémica de la Sierra Madre Occidental, México. Se encuentra listada en el Apéndice I del CITES como especie “en peligro de extinción” (Collar y Juniper 1992) y es una de las pocas especies de psitácidos que habita en los bosques templados de coníferas (Collar y Juniper 1992; BirdLife 2009). La población silvestre de R. pachyrhyncha ha sido objeto de estudio desde 1995, cuando se inicio en México un esfuerzo para establecer un programa integral de conservación para la cotorra serrana occidental, a cargo del Instituto Tecnológico y de estudios superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), este programa nos conduciría a un mejor conocimiento de la población de la cotorra y sus necesidades, para proponer y desarrollar un plan de conservación para esta especie y su hábitat, tomando en cuenta las realidades socioeconómicas del área e incorporando a la población local en los procesos de planeación. El actual programa de R. pachyrhyncha se centra en las acciones de conservación para establecer la línea base sobre el estatus, distribución, ecología y conservación de las cotorras serranas en el Norte de México. El objetivo de este documento es hacer un análisis a partir de la revisión de literatura sobre el estado de conservación y analizar los vacíos de información así como proponer acciones futuras para su conservación.

 1.1 INTRODUCTION

The Thick-billed parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) (fig. 1) is a species endemic to the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico.  It is listed in Appendix I of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) as a species “in danger of extinction” (Collar and Juniper, 1992) and it is one of the few psitaccidae species that inhabit temperate coniferous forests (Collar and Juniper 1992; Bird Life 2009).  The wild population of R. pachyrhyncha has been studied since 1995, when efforts began in Mexico to set up an integral conservation program for the Thick-billed parrot, under the direction of the Monterrey Technological Institute of Superior Studies (ITESM).  This program would lead us to a better knowledge of the parrot population and its needs in order to propose and develop a conservation plan for this species and its habitat, taking into account the socioeconomic realities of the area and incorporating the local population into the planning processes.  The current program for R. pachyrhyncha focuses on the conservation actions for establishing the baseline for status, distribution, ecology and conservation of[PP1]Thick-billed parrots in northern Mexico.  The objective of the present document is to make an analysis based on a review of the literature regarding the state of conservation and to analyze the gaps in information and propose future actions for conservation of the species.

Academic Study of Cabécar Indigenous Language – University of Costa Rica

Here’s a section from a proofreading and correction that I did for Guillermo Gonzalez Campos of the University of Costa Rica.  The editing was fairly detailed in some portions of this paper.

 

Cabécar
 
Guillermo González Campos
University of Costa Rica
1. General introduction to the language
Cabécar is one of five indigenous languages still spoken in Costa Rica.1 Currently it is the language with the largest number of speakers in this country.2 In the national census of 2011, 16,985 personsidentified themselves as members of this people group. Approximately 85 percent of all of these speak Cabécar as their mother tongue.3 Like other indigenous languages still alive in Costa Rica, Cabécar is a Chibchan language. It is classified by Constenla (2008) as belonging to the West Isthmian group with Bribri, Naso and Boruca. The Chibchan family is the largest among the indigenous genealogical groups in southern Central America.3 Adolfo Constenla (2002, 2005) demonstrated in recent times that Chibchan is part of a larger group with Misumalpan and the two Lencan languages, which he named the “Lenmichian Micro-phylum”.
 

Cabécar has two well-differentiated dialects: the northern one spoken in Chirripó and Valle de La Estrella, and the southern one spoken in Talamanca and Ujarrás. The differences between these dialects are mostly in phonology. Northern Cabécar has a vowel sound [ɤ] and aspirated consonants, which are not present in the southern[PP1]  variety of the language.

The main typological features of this language5 are the following:
 
1.      It is an ergative language. The canonical word order in a transitive clause is erg-abs-verb.
2.      The possessor precedes the possessed, and descriptive adjectives follow the noun. 
3.      Cabécar uses postpositions, not prepositions.
4.      It is a tonal language, with two different tones: low and high.
 
As regards the morphological features, Cabécar is an inflectional language that depends entirely upon suffixation. The following word categories are inflected: nouns, adjectives, verbs, some adverbs and numeral quantifiers. There is no grammatical gender marker. Number is distinguished by the plural marker –wá on human nouns and a few domestic and farm animals (dogs, cats, hens, horses and on the like). In the verbal morphology, tense, aspect and mood are marked by suffixes and clitics.
 
With respect to orthography, Cabécar uses the Latin alphabet, based on its employment in Spanish. The letters have the same phonetic value as in Spanish with the exception of vowels with umlauts, ä [ɤ], ë [ɪ] and ö [ʊ], the consonants l [ɺ] and y [ʤ], and the aspirated consonants that are represented by digraphs(kj, tj and pj). There are two diacritical signs: the macron below (_) marks nasality in the vowels, and the acute accent (´) is used for marking the high tone.
 
2. A sketch of Cabécar evaluative morphology
 
In Cabécar, as in other indigenous languages of Costa Rica,  evaluative morphology is very poor. This is due to the fact that evaluation is done, to a great extent[PP2] , using syntactic strategies. For example, with nouns and verbs, diminution or augmentation is expressed through adjectival and adverbial modification. Evaluative morphology is found only in the adjectives and a few adverbs. It is related to the property of specifying various degrees, which are measured or estimated by the speaker’s subjective experience. Specifically, there are two concepts involved in this process: attenuation and intensification.

 [PP1]Sugiero las mayúsculas solamente cuando el adjetivo es seguido por el sustantivo Cabécar.

 [PP2]Me gustaría saber cuál es la expresión original española.