Facts to go
Where Turkish is spoken & where the language comes from
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is the first language of around 85 million people. It is an important minority language in countries such as Cyprus, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, and there are also large Turkish-speaking communities in other parts of Europe and in North America.
As one of the Turkic languages, there are many similarities in references and word formation to languages such as Azerbaijani, Uzbeki, Kazakh and Turkmen. A few terms have also found their way into the Turkish language as loan words from Arabic, such as the greeting merhaba (from the Arabic marhaba) In the more recent past, loan words have also been taken over from French, English and German. You can understand or work out the meaning of words such as sosyal media (social media), televizyon (television/TV) and çikolata (chocolate), even if you come from another countries – and without any need for professional translation.
Long and even longer words & what they mean for translation
The Turkish language is an agglutinating language, which means that words can be extended by adding suffixes to express grammatical functions. Put simply, this means that the words get longer and longer the more information they contain. A good example of this:
ev (the house) 🠖 evler (the houses) 🠖 evlerim (my houses) 🠖 evlerimde (in my houses)
As a translator you therefore have to rethink things and create several words out of one, or vice versa. Of course, professional translators can do this without a problem. As native speakers, they speak Turkish every day and know the intricacies of the language. The long words only become a bit more challenging in texts that are set up in a specific layout which also has to work for the translated text. This is the case with medical translations for patient information leaflets, for example, in which there is little space for information. If the words of the translation are longer than the original, the line breaks will change and so will the length of the paragraphs. Layout adjustment is required here to move each word to the right position so that the finished product is as it should be (in terms of content and visual appearance).
Contracts, documents and paperwork – the Turkish translation must be right
There are some texts that contain sensitive information and have to be translated particularly carefully. This is true, for example, of translations of contracts and official documents. Not everyone can produce translations of this sort. Legal translations are always completed by specialist translators with a legal background. For official documents that require certification, only sworn translators who have given an oath before a district court, a higher regional court or an official public body are permitted to translate them.
For specialist Turkish translations, the greatest precision is required. Technical translations must not differ from the original in terms of content. Technical terms that are incorrectly translated can have serious consequences. For scientific translations, too, it must be ensured that the translator has the necessary expertise, conveys complex matters correctly and uses the technical terminology perfectly. The more specific the area is, the greater the expertise translators should be able to demonstrate – and they should always be native speakers.
