Given the sheer size of Russia, the country is dotted with indigenous languages that differ dramatically from Russian. Most of these languages are endangered precisely due to Russian, which is used as a lingua franca and holds high prestige around the country—but countless speakers of minority languages continue to speak their languages nonetheless. The Altai people, with their Altai language, are no different.
Altai has around 60,000 speakers in total, so it’s hardly the biggest language in the world. UNESCO classifies the language as endangered, even though many children learn Altai exclusively from birth and only learn Russian upon starting school. The dominance of Russian threatens Altai, and translation services are typically not available for the language, with most companies focusing solely on Russian. We understand why—profits. But at the same time, we at TranslationServices.com know that Altai is an important language that deserves its own translation team—which is why we’ve proudly set up our own Altai translation services.
Our Altai translation services are affordable—request a free quote today to see for yourself.
Learning about the Altai language
Altai comes in two distinct flavors: Northern Altai and Southern Altai. They are not fully mutually intelligible and are considered by many linguists to be separate languages, with Southern Altai accounting for the bulk (roughly 55,000) of Altai speakers. The language is mostly spoken in the Altai Republic, located in southern Siberia, as well as in neighboring Altai Krai and Kemerovo Oblast. Altai, a Turkic language, was known as Oyrot until 1948 and is written in the Cyrillic script today, historically having sometimes used the Latin alphabet.
Like other Turkic languages, Altai uses a subject-object-verb word order (the most common word order among the world’s languages). Other notable Turkic features include vowel harmony and an agglutinative nature, wherein suffixes are glued to nominal and verbal stems. To indicate grammatical relationships in a sentence, Altai uses a series of noun cases—seven in total—the application of which depends on the phonology of the stem. Altai pronouns are divided into three persons, like in English, although there is no gender distinction in the third person, and Altai distinguishes between the singular and plural in the second person. Like in Russian, the second-person plural can also be used as a formal version of “you.”
Our Altai translators are passionate about translating their language and helping to preserve its vitality.
We offer a diverse range of Altai translation services.
Flexibility is key when you manage translation services, since clients have all sorts of different needs. Some need translation into Altai and others translation from Altai, but our team can handle both. This is great for historians who would like to translate historical documents from Altai or everyday Altai speakers who want to share Altai literature with people abroad. It’s also ideal for researchers who want to distribute surveys to Altai speakers in their own language or language activists who want to produce more content—like books, games, websites, and educational material—in Altai, which helps learners acquire the language and gives speakers more opportunities to use it.
Our flexible Altai translation services are designed to accommodate your needs—so reach out anytime and tell us what you’re looking for.