Welcome to Southeast Asia, one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the planet. Indeed, the two countries in the world with the most languages are Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, but mainland Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar also boast impressive linguistic diversity, with several different language families native to the region. Despite not being big names outside of the region, many of these languages are relatively widely spoken and influential, such as the Karen languages.
The Karen, or Karenic, languages are native to Myanmar and Thailand, straddling much of the long border shared between the two countries. There are three main branches of Karen languages—namely, S’gaw Karen, Pwo Karen, and Pa’O—with Karenni (or Red Karen) and Padaung also standing as prominent Karen languages, although the Karen languages are often not mutually intelligible. Together, there are roughly seven million native speakers of Karen languages. However, the Karen languages don’t receive a lot of attention at the global level, so translation services for them are limited. At TranslationServices.com, we’re doing our best to rectify this by offering our own high-quality Karen translation services.
If you want to see a quote for our Karen translation services—for free—all you have to do is ask!
Here’s some more information about the Karen languages!
Karen speakers are most heavily concentrated in Myanmar, specifically Kayin (or Karen) State, which runs down a significant portion of Myanmar’s border with Thailand. Thus, naturally, there are also many Karen speakers across the border in Thailand. The biggest branch is S’gaw, with about 3 million speakers, and Pa’O also accounts for a considerable 1.5 million speakers, mostly in Myanmar. The Karen languages are often written in the Burmese script, although there’s also a native Karen script, designed specifically for S’gaw Karen.
The Karen languages are part of the Sino–Tibetan language family, but their precise classification within the family is uncertain. They exhibit a subject-verb-object word order, like Mandarin, but this is unusual because other than Karen, Bai, and the Chinese languages, all Sino–Tibetan languages use a subject-object-verb word order. Most likely, the unusual word order is a result of heavy influence from nearby Mon and Zhaung–Tai languages, which hail from separate language families. Karen also has a number of cases (five in S’gaw) and, like many other Southeast Asian languages, does not use plurals.
Translation services available both to and from Karen
We want you to have access to the best Karen translation services possible, so we’ve scouted out the best Karen translators in the various Karen languages from across Myanmar and Thailand. They have the skills to translate both to Karen and from Karen, so don’t hesitate to reach out regardless of your translation needs. For example, our team would be happy to translate historical documents or traditional literature in any Karen language for your dissemination abroad, spreading knowledge of the Karen people and culture. At the same time, our Karen translators are also passionate about translating from English to Karen—such as for educational materials that help Karen-speaking children obtain a quality education or entertainment content like books, poetry, games, apps, and websites that elevate the status of Karen and help safeguard it from erosion from the many other languages in Southeast Asia.
We’re eager to get started with your Karen translation project—so just send us a message whenever you’re ready!