The Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China’s western Xinjiang province, have received a significant amount of media attention in recent years. While many Uyghurs speak Mandarin Chinese, whose nationwide usage is heavily promoted by the Chinese government, they’re more comfortable in their own language: Uyghur.
Since Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the language has more than 10 million speakers, one would assume that the language is stable and not endangered. Indeed, until recently, Uyghur-speaking children received Uyghur-language education, and the language was widely used in print, television, and radio. However, while obtaining verifiable information on the situation in Xinjiang is difficult, reports have surfaced in recent years of suppression of the Uyghur language amidst a government campaign to increase Mandarin usage in the region. Thus, Uyghur could be facing a precarious and uncertain future. At TranslationServices.com, we believe in the importance of all languages, including Uyghur, and we’re proud to offer translation services for this precious language.
You can reach out anytime and request a free quote for our Uyghur translation services—quotes are free!
Understanding the Uyghur language
Uyghur is mostly spoken by the Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang province, but communities of speakers also live outside the country, particularly in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. It is a Turkic language, making it distantly related to Turkish, although the (major) language it’s most closely related to is Uzbek. Uyghur includes the typical Turkic features of agglutination and vowel harmony, and it uses a subject-object-verb word order, which is universal in Turkic languages. Uyghur is also one of the few Turkic languages to be predominantly written in the Arabic script.
Uyghur does not use grammatical gender, although its 10 cases are enough to intimate your average English speaker. The language doesn’t have articles, but the word bir, meaning “one,” can optionally be used to mark indefiniteness. Second-person pronouns in Uyghur have three politeness distinctions—informal, polite, and respectful—and demonstratives also contain more nuance than in English. Not only are Uyghur demonstratives broken down into three distances (“this,” “that,” and “that over there”), but they also come in three forms: a basic form (“this pen”), one that emphasizes the particular noun (“this pen (and not any others)”), and one that denotes familiarity (“this pen (that you are familiar with)”).
If you think Uyghur sounds hard, most second-language learners would probably agree with you. However, our Uyghur translators have spoken the language from birth and are happy to help.
Translation to or from Uyghur? It’s your choice!
It’s important to offer flexibility in translation services—after all, different clients have drastically different needs. We recognize that some clients want to translate from Uyghur to English while others prefer translation from English to Uyghur, so we’ve set up our team to handle both directions. Our Uyghur-to-English translators are ready to turn your Uyghur-language historical documents, literature, business materials, and more into flowing English, helping Uyghurs express their thoughts and culture abroad. Our English-to-Uyghur team is similarly on standby to translate business content, educational materials, questionnaires, books, games, websites, and more into Uyghur, helping ensure the continued vitality of the Uyghur language.
We’d love to discuss your needs for your Uyghur translation project. Contact us today to get the conversation started.
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