Kurdish Language Interpreters and Translators

Kurdish Interpreters And Translators

CIT offers Kurdish interpreters and translators with legal, medical and specialty experience, including criminal and civil matters, employee meetings, engineering, patent cases, labor disputes, immigration and more.

Although based in Los Angeles, CIT offers comprehensive Kurdish language services including interpretation, translation and transcription, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, worldwide. Our interpreters and translators are native speakers who have been screened, certified, have provided credentials, field tested, and kept up to date with developments in both English and the Kurdish language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Kurdish language interpreters and translators possess in-depth knowledge of the Kurdish language, as well as of the culture and history of the Kurdish people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.

The Kurdish Language

The Kurdish language is part of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European languages. About 4,000 years ago, the first Indo-European language speakers migrated to modern-day Kurdistan. The original language of the Kurds had evolved completelty to what is known as modern-day Kurdish. Kurdish is very similar to other languages from lands in the area such as Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijani.

Currently, the Kurdish language had official language status in Kurdistan. Even though the Kurdish language is spoken heavily in Turkey and Syria, it still does not have official status in these countries. In Iran, the Kurds live in villages and many are nomadic as well. The Iranian Kurds speak Kurdish at home and the language is also spoken in many Kurdish areas. Additionally, there is media such as newspapers, magazines and radio shows in Kurdish. Kurdish speakers also speak Farsi.

In Iraq, the Kurdish language has official status in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan. Since the early 1900s, Kurdish has been the language of public schools. The history of the Kurdish language is a little different in Turkey, where it had been banned in 1938 resulting in diminished bilingualism of Kurdish and Turkish languages. In the early 1960s, as a new Turkish constitution was developed, the Kurdish language reappeared but would be banned almost immediately. In 1991, it became legal to reuse the Kurdish language and in 2006, Turkey granted permission to allow Turkish shows to appear in Kurdish.

Although a rather small group, the Kurdish community in Armenia was protected and had state support from the 1930s to the 1980s. However, now that the Soviet Union no longer stands, there is an uncertain future for the Kurdish in Armenia. In Syria, the Kurdish language is spoken only at home as the Syrian government has opposed the use of the Kurdish language.

According to the Kurdish Academy of Language, the Kurdish language is divided into three dialects, including central Kurdish, northern Kurdish and Southern Kurdish. Central Kurdish, known as Kurdi or Sorani is spoken by about 6.8 million people in various countries such as Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lebanon, Syria and Turkmenistan. Within the Central Kurdish dialect, there are about 10 varieties. Northern Kurdish, known as Kermanci, Kirmanci, Kurdi, Kurmanci or Kurmanji, is spoken by about 15 million people in Turkey but is also spoken in other countries, similar to Central Kurdish. Lastly, Southern Kurdish is spoken by about 3 million people in Iran and Iraq.

Kurdish has ten vowels that can be either short or long. The length of a vowel can indicate a different word meaning. The Kurdish language is inflected, meaning that prefixes and suffixes are added to root words to give them meaning. Nouns are either simple or compound, there are no grammatical genders, there is adjective agreement and verbs agree with their subject, either in person or number. Verbs can be either present or past, simple or secondary. There are three tenses (present, past and future), two voices (active and passive), two aspects (perfect and imperfect) and four moods (indicative, conditional, imperative and potential). The Kurdish language follows the Subject-Object-Verb word order.

The Kurdish language shares much of its vocabulary with other Indo-Iranian languages. Due to the fact that Kurdish is spoken in many countries, each country has influenced the vocabulary somewhat but adding loanwords. Even recently, the English language has had its influence on the Kurdish language in technological, political and military vocabulary.