Tuvan Language Interpreters and Translators

Tuvan Interpreters And Translators

CIT offers Tuvan 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 Tuvan 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 Tuvan language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Tuvan language interpreters and translators possess in depth knowledge of the Tuvan language, as well as of the culture and history of the Tuvan people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.

The Tuvan Language

The Tuvan language, also known as Tuvinia, Tyvan or Tuvin, is a Turkic language native to the Republic of Tuva, located in southcentral Siberia. Tuvan is also spoken in relatively smaller groups in China and Mongolia. It is estimated that about 280,000 native Tuvan speakers live today. Tuvan is very close to the Khahas and Altai languages within the Turkic language family group. Tuvan has been highly influenced by both Mongolian and Russian languages.

The Tuvan language has four major dialects. They are: Western, Central, Northeastern and Southeaster. The written Tuvan language is based on the Central Tuvan dialect. Initially, Tuvan was written using the Latin alphabet, around 1930. This Latin alphabet system for Tuvan was written by a Tuvan Buddhist monk, Mongush Lopsang-Chinmit. However, since 1943, Tuvan has been written using the Cyrillic alphabet.

Many linguists have determined that the Tuvan language has been associated with the socio-historical language of Tuvan. The earliest recordings of Tuvan come from the early and mid 1800s. The name of the language comes from the people, the Tuva, who have in the past been referred to as Soyons, Soyots or Urlankhals. The Tuvan had been ruled by many empires and leaders, such as China, Russia and Mongolia for many centuries. In 1921, they gained independence and were referred to as the Tuvan’s People’s Republic.

There have been many historical tensions between the Tuvan and the Soviet Union/ Russian Federation. For example, in 1990s, there was violence between the USSR and the Tuvans. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Tuvans wanted to be as independent from Russia as possible, particularly for their language and culture. A study completed by social scientists Hagendoorn, Poppe and Minescu (2008) indicated that this hope for independence was triggered by prejudice. Since 2000, the Russian Federation has tried to decrease the separate tendencies of smaller groups living in Russia. However, these small groups have continued to use and embrace their culture and ethnicities.

Tuvan has 19 consonants. There are three variations of vowels in Tuvan. They are short, long and short with a low pitch. The long vowels are twice as long as the short vowels. The low pitch can lead to a creaky voice for the Tuvan speaker.

There are several loan words in the Tuvan languages. Loanwords from the early layer of the Tuvan language come from Mongolic preserved. Late layer words had vowels that did not change as the word became a Tuvan word.

The Tuvan language has six cases of nouns. They are accusative, dative, ablative, locative and allative. Tuvan follows the subject-object-verb word order. Currently, the Tuvan alphabet is a modification of the Russian alphabet plus three letters.