Maya Testimonies in the Visual History Archive: Transcribing, Translating, and Accessing Survivor Life Histories

FAIN: PW-290503-23

Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA 50112-2227)
Brigittine French (Project Director: July 2022 to present)

Producing 76 transcriptions in Mayan-Spanish and/or Kaqchikel, as well as 24 English language transcripts, of oral histories related to the genocide of Indigenous Maya people in Guatemala from 1960–1996 which are held at the Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

This project will make first person Maya survivor testimonies available for research, education, and dissemination by creating transcriptions and translations of a set of oral histories held with consent by the Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation. During the grant period, the team will produce written transcripts in Maya war survivors' original spoken languages (the Mayan language Kaqchikel and Spanish) for approximately 10 percent of the collection and will translate a subset of these transcripts into English. This will provide free public access to these histories, allowing them to be catalogued and used in research and education. This project provides a concrete model for survivor testimony from different linguistic communities in this archive to become useable and accessible in future work. The new transcriptions and translations will be shared electronically through multiple pathways in the public archive.