Most people think of “Chinese” as a single language, even though, linguistically, it’s an entire subfamily, with members more distinct from one another than French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese are to one another. Mandarin and Cantonese are two well-known Chinese languages, for example, and they’re entirely mutually unintelligible. But there are far more Chinese languages than that—it’s just that most of them aren’t known outside of China. There is one, however, that’s known outside of Chinese territory, and that’s because it’s spoken outside of China—and that’s Dungan.
Dungan is a Chinese language spoken far away from China, tucked away in the valleys of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. With more than 110,000 native speakers, it retains a healthy speaker community, even as the local languages of the host countries erode away at the Dungans’ native language and way of life. But still, the Dungan people hold onto their cultural identity, learning Russian, Kazakh, or Kyrgyz without giving up their native Dungan. What’s unfortunate is that few translation companies are willing to work with this unique language, making Dungan translation services scarce—but we here at TranslationServices.com are here to proudly fill this glaring gap in international translation services with our brand-new Dungan translation team.
Want to see a free quote for our Dungan translation services? It’s as simple as contacting us and asking for one!
Dungan: the Chinese language in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
The genesis of the Dungan ethnic group began when Hui people from the northwestern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi migrated to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in the late 19th century, bringing their language with them. Today, they primarily occupy the Fergana Valley and Chu Valley in the two Central Asian countries, with a smaller number of Dungan residing in Russia. Isolated from other Chinese-speaking ethnic groups, the Dungan language sustained increasing influence from Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other nearby Turkic languages.
Today, Dungan exhibits asymmetrical intelligibility with the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, with speakers of Beijing Mandarin able to understand Dungan but Dungan speakers unable to understand Beijing Mandarin. With a linguist experienced with the Hui people describing Dungan as a form of Gansu Mandarin brimming with Turkic and Russian vocabulary, Dungan is certainly a unique language, and one worth preserving into the future. Given its Sinitic roots, Dungan grammar is similar to that of Mandarin and other Chinese languages, but a notable difference is the loss of classifier words, which in many Chinese languages are used to categorize different types of nouns.
Working hard to provide reliable Dungan translation services
Most companies completely gloss over the remarkably unique language of Dungan, but here at TranslationSerivces.com, we put great effort into delivering the best Dungan translation services possible. Our Dungan translators come from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia alike, representing all the different varieties of this colorful and unique language. As native speakers, they’re proud of their language and can provide translation services both to and from Dungan. We mostly work with the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the official script for Dungan today, but we can also translate historical texts written in the Latin or Xiao’erjing scripts.
The types of documents we offer Dungan translation services for also vary. We hire Dungan translation experts representing different specialties, allowing us to expertly cater to the diverse needs of business clients, academic clients, literary clients, localization clients, and more—no matter what kind of project you have, our team of passionate Dungan translators is eager to help. In fact, we can even assist you if your project is filled with technical terminology—since many of our translators are well versed in additional subjects, you simply need to tell us what discipline your text deals with, and we’ll do our best to match you with a suitable Dungan translation expert.
Dungan translation services are our pride and joy. See what our team can do for you by reaching out with a message today.
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