Most people think of Hindi as the “language of India.” It’s true that Hindi is the official language, alongside English, but it’s certainly not the case that all Indians speak Hindi. India is characterized by a great degree of linguistic diversity, with close to 450 languages spoken around the country, and many aren’t even related to Hindi. However, today’s language, Maithili, is indeed related to Hindi.
Maithili is no small language—it’s spoken as a native language by around 33 million people, concentrated in the cultural region of Mathila. It’s counted among India’s 22 recognized languages, allowing it to be used in educational and administrative settings. Maithili is also recognized as a second official language in the Indian state of Jharkhand. With all the clout that Maithili holds, having access to quality translation services for this language is important—but most translation agencies don’t serve local Indian languages like Maithili. So we at TranslationServices.com have decided to step in and offer Maithili translation services to anyone who would like them.
We can provide free quotes for our Maithili translation services—all you have to do is ask for one.
Learning more about Maithili
Maithili is shared between northeastern India and eastern Nepal, spoken in the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand and Nepal’s Outer Terai region. Although it’s currently written in the Devanagari script—the same script used for Hindi—it was originally written in its own script, known as the Tirhuta script. By the 20th century, Maithili speakers were largely writing in Kaithi, which was widely used in northern and eastern India. Today, Maithili is almost always written in Devanagari, although interest in revitalizing the Tirhuta script is growing.
Being an Indo–European language, Maithili is technically related to English. However, the two languages are only distantly related, and most English speakers couldn’t detect any similarities in Maithili. Unlike English, Maithili presents speakers with 10 grammatical cases, with the accusative split between a definite and indefinite version. Maithili alignment is both nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive, with different options to mark the subjects and objects in a sentence. The language has three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter—which impact inflectional forms. Finally, the Maithili pronoun system is complex, with inclusive (including the listener) and exclusive (excluding the listener) first-person plural pronouns and multiple honorific forms to denote politeness and formality.
Choose the kind of Maithili translation you want.
It’s clear from the above description that English and Maithili are worlds apart, despite being related. But don’t worry—our Maithili translators are experts in both languages and know how to smoothly translate between Maithili and English. They’re experts in translation whether it’s from Maithili or to Maithili, so our team can accommodate a wide array of translation needs. We have translators who can seamlessly translate historical documents or traditional literature in Maithili, regardless of the script used, and we have translators specializing in contemporary literature translation from Maithili to English. We also have team members ready to translate promotional business material into Maithili and others well versed in translation creative content—from books and poetry to games, websites, and apps—into Maithili. So, no matter what you’re looking for in Maithili translation services, we’re confident we can fulfill your expectations.
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