Armenian Translation

The first decision in an Armenian translation is whether the text is to be Eastern or Western Armenian. This is not a preference between dialects but a choice between two separate written traditions: spelling, vocabulary and even the sound value of certain letters differ. A document going to an institution in Armenia is prepared in Eastern Armenian, while a text addressed to diaspora community bodies is usually written in Western Armenian. The wrong choice will not make the text unreadable, but it will make it look foreign.

Two traditions, two spellings

The most visible difference between the two traditions is a shift in the way voiced and voiceless consonants are read; the same sequence of letters sounds different in each. The direct consequence is that proper names travel into the Latin alphabet differently: one and the same name may begin with a “p” in one tradition and a “b” in the other. This is why a family’s document issued in Armenia and its record drawn up in Türkiye can carry different spellings. We prefer to see every document you hold before translation begins.

The alphabet is distinctive, and so is the punctuation: question, exclamation and emphasis are marked above the syllable concerned rather than at the end of the sentence, and a separate mark closes the sentence. A translation that carries Turkish punctuation across unchanged will stand out even where the grammar is sound. In typesetting, too, the rules for breaking lines differ from those of the Latin alphabet.

Frequent errors in translation from Turkish into Armenian

• Mixing the two traditions: when one part of the text follows Eastern spelling and another Western, the document reads as though it had been assembled from pieces.
• Dropping case endings. Armenian noun inflection is rich and possessive relations are built with endings; carrying a Turkish compound across without them breaks the sentence.
• Keeping terms that arrived through Russian. Documents from Armenia may contain administrative terms left over from the Soviet period; their present-day equivalents are different, and the translation must state which period the document belongs to.
• Translating abbreviations. Abbreviations for institutions are established in Armenian in its own letters; matching a Turkish abbreviation letter by letter produces a body nobody recognises.

Which documents are asked for

Document	Context
Civil registry, birth and marriage records	Family law and citizenship matters
Certificate of inheritance and title deed records	Probate files
Church registers and old population ledgers	Genealogical research and verification of identity
Diploma and academic transcript	Education and recognition applications
Commercial contract and invoice	Trade routed through a third country

Records of earlier date demand a separate expertise in this language. In ledgers kept by hand the letterforms differ from today’s printed characters and the text is often dense with abbreviations; work of this kind takes time, and we set the schedule accordingly from the outset. Dates in such records are sometimes written according to the church calendar; we do not convert such a date on our own initiative, but keep the form used in the document and explain it in a translator’s note.

Names and consistency with the passport

Armenian surnames commonly end in the same suffix, and that suffix takes more than one form as it moves into the Latin alphabet. The question of which form is correct has a single answer: whichever appears in the person’s passport. Armenian passports show the name in Latin letters as well, and that spelling may have been shaped by the Russian transliteration tradition. When we translate the document we do not read the name afresh; we use the passport field exactly as it stands, and where it differs we show the original Armenian spelling in a translator’s note.

The father’s name appears as a separate field in Armenian records and may carry a suffix following the Russian tradition. We translate that field as it stands and do not move its contents into the surname box.

Timescale and submission

Armenian is one of the languages for which the pool of translators in Türkiye is comparatively narrow; short civil registry documents come back within a reasonable time, while archive and handwritten work can take longer to deliver. Because direct commercial traffic between the two countries is limited, commercial translations mostly arrive through companies in a third country and contain an intervening English text; with files of that kind it has to be settled at the outset which text is the original.

Tell us which tradition is wanted, the institution the document will be submitted to and any translations made previously. For the fee and the delivery date, upload your document; unit prices are on our price list.

The figures here are based on the current tariff; with rare languages, translator availability may extend the timescale. For definitive information, rely on the current announcement of the institution concerned.