Behdini Translation Services

Behdini, also written Badini or Bahdini, is the Kurmanji spoken in and around Duhok in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Prism Language Solutions treats it as its own assignment rather than folding it into a Kurdish order, because the standing mistake in this industry is sending a Sorani linguist to a Behdini speaker and calling the difference an accent. Certified documents come with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.

Last reviewed September 12, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

Duhok governorate sits in the northwestern corner of Iraqi Kurdistan, bordering Turkey and Syria, and its towns, Zakho, Amedi, Semel, Akre, are where Behdini is spoken. Grammatically it is Kurmanji: it keeps the grammatical gender and the case endings that Sorani has lost. Geographically and administratively it sits inside a Sorani-dominated region, and that combination is the whole story of this page.

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Behdini or Sorani: Getting the Kurdish Interpreter Right

Sorani and Behdini are not near neighbors. Sorani dropped the gender and case system; Behdini uses it in every sentence. Verb morphology differs, and so does a substantial slice of ordinary vocabulary. Two speakers can manage a conversation about the weather and fail completely on a description of who did what to whom in which order, which is precisely what a hearing or an asylum interview consists of.

The northern comparison is the useful one. Behdini and the Kurmanji of Turkey and Syria sit close enough that a Kurmanji interpreter generally covers a Duhok speaker well, once the variety is named and the interpreter has worked with Iraqi speakers before; the vocabulary differs mainly in its Arabic borrowings. So the honest answer to the booking question is often a Kurmanji interpreter, named as such, rather than a Behdini specialist. Substituting Sorani and leaving that off the order is the one thing we will not do. See Kurmanji translation and Kurdish translation.

Behdini in Arabic Script on a Translation Order

Written Behdini catches people out because it looks like the wrong language. Kurmanji in Turkey and Syria uses the Latin Hawar alphabet; Behdini, written inside Iraq, normally uses the Arabic-based Kurdish script, the same alphabet Sorani uses. A page of Behdini therefore looks like Sorani to anyone who judges by the letters and behaves like Kurmanji as soon as it is read.

That has a practical effect on quoting. A file screened by script alone gets assigned to a Sorani translator who then produces something serviceable and wrong in the details. We read a sample before assigning, and where a document is genuinely Behdini we say so on the order. Younger writers in the diaspora sometimes use Latin letters instead, which is a diaspora habit rather than a rule, and we reproduce whichever the writer used.

Iraqi and Kurdistan Region Records in a Behdini Translation File

Here is the part that saves clients money. A Behdini-speaking family from Duhok holds Iraqi documents, and Iraqi documents are Arabic documents: the birth and marriage certificates, the civil status identity card, the nationality certificate, and since 2016 the biometric unified National Card that replaced the older pair. Those pages are Arabic translation work; see Arabic translation.

Behdini Interpreters for Asylum, Court and Medical Appointments

Asylum is where most Behdini requests start. The applicant is describing a village outside Duhok, a camp, a checkpoint, a date, and the officer is testing today’s answers against a declaration filed months earlier. An interpreter working across a dialect gap fills gaps with plausible guesses, and a guess that lands wrong reads on the record as a contradiction. Certification exams do not exist for Behdini in any state, or for any other Kurdish variety, so an immigration judge or a state court qualifies the interpreter on the record and we supply what that finding needs.

In a hospital the reflex is an Arabic interpreter, on the assumption that an Iraqi patient speaks Arabic. Many Behdini speakers do, to a point. A woman who spent her life in a village near Zakho may have none, and she will nod through a consent conversation rather than say so. Any provider taking federal funding owes her an interpreter in her own language at no cost. See USCIS interview interpreting and medical interpreting.

Behdini Translation Cost and Turnaround

Most of what reaches us under a Behdini order turns out to be Arabic, and we requote it at Arabic rates once we have read it, which lowers the total more often than it raises it. Genuine Behdini text is priced by the source word at the rare-language end of the band, handwritten material after we have seen a sample, and audio on running time. A short certified page starts from around $24.95 as a US market guide and a single certificate is normally back within a business day. Figures are on the pricing page.

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