Tibet is a beautiful mountainous land, full of rich culture not found anywhere else on Earth. The culture isn’t the only thing unique to Tibet—Tibetans also have their own language and writing system, which are still in full swing today despite the pressure from Chinese authorities to switch to Mandarin. Tibetan remains an important liturgical language for Buddhists today, standing alongside Sanskrit. With all the influence, historical and contemporary, that the Tibetan language holds, there are many reasons one may be interested in Tibetan translation services.
Tibetan is not so much a single language as it is a group of closely related languages. Three main varieties are spoken across the Tibetan Plateau—Ü-Tsang (or Central) Tibetan, Khams Tibetan, and Amdo Tibetan. Standard Tibetan, or Lhasa Tibetan, is the prestige dialect of Central Tibetan. Additional Tibetic languages can be found in other provinces of China, as well as India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan. However, “Tibetan” may best describe the languages spoken in the Tibetan Plateau. Unfortunately, translation services for Tibetan are uncommon—which is why we at TranslationServices.com decided to offer our own Tibetan translation services.
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Learning about the beautiful Tibetan language
Tibetan is nothing like Chinese—but they are related. Both come from the Sino–Tibetan language family, with all Chinese languages hailing from the Sinitic side and Tibetan coming from the Tibetic side. Tibetan is spoken by several million people, mostly in Tibet and India. The language has its own writing system, the Tibetan script, but since spelling has not been reformed since the 800s, the orthography and the pronunciation are wildly divergent, making Tibetan one of the hardest languages in the world to spell.
Tibetan uses six noun cases, including the ergative and absolutive cases. This means that Tibetan is an ergative language, unlike Mandarin, and therefore treats intransitive subjects and transitive objects grammatically identically. Like Mandarin, Tibetan nouns don’t usually have a plural form. Tibetan pronouns come in many forms, including a dedicated pejorative form, as well as a dual form in addition to singular and plural for all persons. An interesting feature of Tibetan is its various copulas, which can indicate evidentiality and that the speaker has only recently become aware of what they are stating, among other uses.
We’re here to translate anything you want to and from Tibetan.
Whether you’re working with Central Tibetan (including Lhasa Tibetan), Khams Tibetan, or Amdo Tibetan, our team of professional Tibetan translators is ready to serve you. Our years of experience translating Tibetan allows us to provide translation services both to and from the language, for any range of documents. Let’s say you want to share a historical document written in Tibetan—we can translate it (the lack of spelling reforms makes it even easier!). We’d also be happy to translate any Tibetan literature (traditional or contemporary) as well as religious materials you may like to share.
What if you want to translate content into Tibetan? No worries—just tell us what variant of Tibetan you prefer, and we’ll find the right translator for you. We can translate promotional materials to cater to a Tibetan customer base, pedagogical materials that promote Tibetan-language education to native-speaking youth, or interesting content like books, poems, apps, games, and websites to promote increased use and passion for the precious Tibetan language.
To start your Tibetan translation adventure, simply get in touch with us today!