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Introducing Our Newest Translation Services: Sikkimese!



Most of the world considers Hindi the language of India—but in fact, there are around 450 “languages of India,” and many of them are completely unrelated to Hindi. It’s true that Hindi is the biggest language in the South Asian country, but India is an incredibly diverse land, with hundreds of languages spoken vibrantly by large communities. In India’s northeast, languages—such as Sikkimese—are generally related not to Hindi but to Mandarin and Tibetan.


As of 2022, Sikkimese is estimated to have around 70,000 native speakers, and for much of the language’s history, it was not written, with speakers defaulting to Tibetan for any written communications. However, over the past 50+ years, Sikkimese has gradually grown as a written language, taught in local schools and used in some local publications, including an active newspaper. Despite this promising growth, the language still faces difficulties, and many Sikkimese speakers are necessarily bilingual in Nepali, the lingua franca of the region. Translation services for Sikkimese are scarce, but we at TranslationServices.com would like to support the language—that’s why we’ve launched our own Sikkimese translation team.


If you’re interested in checking out our Sikkimese translation rates, request a free quote today!


Sikkimese: the unique language of India’s least populated state

Sikkimese, which may also be called Bhutia or Drenjongké, is primarily spoken in the Indian state of Sikkim, which obviously derives its name from the Sikkimese ethnic group, although additional Sikkimese-speaking communities also exist in Nepal and Bhutan. However, Sikkimese only accounts for around 6.5% of people in Sikkim, with more than 60% speaking Nepali as their first language. Differences between the various Sikkimese dialects are generally minimal, except for the notable lack of honorifics in some northern dialects. Zooming out further, the language is related to the Tibetan languages—and it’s even written in the Tibetan script.


Sikkimese exhibits a basic word order of subject-object-verb, which is the most common word order in the world. It also places nouns before adjectives and uses postpositions instead of prepositions (i.e., the noun comes before the adposition). In most dialects of Sikkimese, an honorifics system dictates which form of nouns, pronouns, and verbs a speaker will use when speaking with a given person. Somewhat of a rift exists between these dialects and the northern dialects that omit the honorifics system, as most Sikkimese speakers regard a lack of honorifics as vulgar and offensive, while speakers of the northern dialects perceive honorific usage as overly verbose and unnecessary. This adds to the challenge of Sikkimese translation, but don’t worry—our translators are native speakers sensitive to these differences.


Sikkimese translation services carefully tailored to your project

We’re proud to provide flexible Sikkimese translation services expertly tailored to our clients’ needs, whatever they may be. We’ve hired passionate native speakers of Sikkimese from all across Sikkim, Nepal, and Bhutan, covering the different dialects that make up the language—including, importantly, both dialects that use honorifics and those that don’t. You can easily request a specific dialect for your Sikkimese translation. Our translation services are also available in both directions, to Sikkimese or from Sikkimese—it’s your choice.


We also offer different types of Sikkimese translation services, catered to different specialties: academic translation services, business translation services, literary translation services, localization services, and more. If you’re a professor, researcher, student, or other scholar, request our academic translation services—for any discipline—or, if you work in business as a CEO, entrepreneur, marketer, or other business professional, work with our Sikkimese business translator, for any industry. For authors and other creative writers, our literary translators are available to help you widen your audience, and for software developers, our localization experts can help you cater your digital media to a Sikkimese-speaking audience. Whatever kind of Sikkimese translation services you need, we’re here!


Why not get started with our Sikkimese translation services today? Just reach out to discuss your translation project!

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