Kurmanji Translation Services

Kurmanji is Northern Kurdish, the Kurdish of southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, Duhok in Iraq and the Yazidi communities that resettled here after 2014. Prism Language Solutions translates Kurmanji text itself, usually letters, statements and recordings in the Latin Hawar alphabet, and separately translates the Turkish or Arabic civil records that come with it. Anything filed carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy.

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

The general Kurdish translation page explains how Kurmanji, Sorani and Behdini divide up. This page assumes you already know your speaker is a Kurmanji speaker and deals with what follows from that, which is mostly a question of which state issued the paper and which alphabet the writer had.

Kurmanji became a written language outside the countries where it is spoken. Celadet Ali Bedirxan worked out the Latin alphabet still used for it and published it from Damascus in 1932 in the journal Hawar, which ran until 1943; the first two dozen issues carried Kurmanji in both Latin and Arabic-Persian letters before settling on Latin alone. Nearly a century later that is still the orthography of Kurmanji in Turkey, Syria and the diaspora, while Kurmanji written in Iraq and Iran uses an Arabic-based script instead. Which alphabet a page uses tells you where its writer learned to write.

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Kurmanji Speakers from Turkey: Which Records Need Translation

A Kurmanji speaker from Diyarbakir, Van or Mardin files Turkish documents. The workhorse is the nufus kayit ornegi, the civil registry extract, now pulled from the e-Devlet portal as often as from a registry counter, and it is a Turkish-language document requiring a Turkish translator. So are the identity card, the military service record and school diplomas. Nothing in that pile is Kurmanji, and quoting it as Kurmanji costs the client money for no benefit. See Turkish translation.

Where the Kurmanji linguist is needed is the material the family produced themselves: a letter from a village, a political party membership card, a funeral notice, a recorded call, a statement written out before an asylum interview. Turkey is a party to the Apostille Convention, so a Turkish civil record can carry an apostille where a receiving body asks for one; a handwritten Kurmanji letter cannot, because no authority issued it. That distinction confuses more clients than any other on a Turkish file.

Kurmanji Translation for Syrian Kurds and Missing Civil Records

Syrian Kurmanji speakers bring a documentary problem that has no parallel elsewhere in the Kurdish world. An exceptional census in Hasakah province in 1962 stripped a large Kurdish population of Syrian nationality and split them into two groups: ajanib, registered as foreigners and issued red cards, and maktumin, left out of the civil registry altogether and holding no state document of any kind. Legislative Decree 49 of 2011 restored citizenship to the ajanib category. It did not reach the maktumin, and the war that followed made the registry harder to reach for everyone.

What that means for a filing. A client may genuinely have no birth certificate, no marriage record and no national identity number, and no office to ask. This is the situation 8 CFR 103.2(b)(2) addresses: secondary evidence where the primary record is unavailable, and affidavits from people with direct personal knowledge where secondary evidence is unavailable too. The material is often Kurmanji: a statement from an elder, a mukhtar’s letter, a UNHCR registration slip alongside family correspondence. Each item is translated for what it is, with the issuing body named or its absence stated plainly.

Certified Kurmanji Translation of Statements, Letters and Recordings

Handwritten Kurmanji is the most demanding part of the work and the part clients most often underestimate. Writers mix the Hawar letters with Turkish spelling habits, drop the circumflexes that distinguish vowels, switch mid-sentence into Turkish or Arabic, and spell the same village two ways on one page. None of that is careless; it is what writing in a language you were never schooled in looks like.

We transcribe before translating where the hand is difficult, mark genuinely illegible passages instead of filling them, and show code-switching where it occurs rather than smoothing everything into English. Recordings are transcribed in Kurmanji beside the English with timings, and overlapping speech is marked. Details are on the transcription page, and the certificate itself on certified translation.

Kurmanji and Yazidi Files: Names, Places and Interpreter Bookings

Yazidis from Sinjar are Kurmanji speakers, and Lincoln, Nebraska holds the largest Yazidi community in the United States, counted in the low thousands and grown mostly since 2014. Their files run through Iraqi paperwork in Arabic, camp registrations from the Kurdistan Region, and long Kurmanji declarations describing captivity and loss. The religious vocabulary in those declarations is specific and a translator who has not worked with the community will flatten it.

For spoken work the rule is short. A Kurmanji speaker should not be sent a Sorani interpreter; the two have parted company in grammar and everyday vocabulary far enough that detail goes missing under questioning. Behdini speakers from Duhok usually follow a Kurmanji interpreter once the variety is named, which is set out at Behdini translation. Booking runs through USCIS interview interpreting and court interpreting.

Kurmanji Translation Cost and Turnaround

A typed Kurmanji page in the Hawar alphabet is priced by the source word from the higher end of the standard band, because the translator pool is small. Handwritten material is quoted after we have seen it, since legibility rather than length decides the time. Audio is quoted on running time. A short certified item is from around $24.95 per page as a US market guide and usually returns within a business day. If most of the bundle proves to be Turkish or Arabic, we requote at those rates. See the pricing page.

Ready to start? Send the document or the booking details through the quote form, call +1 (833) 282 8883, or email info@prismlinguistics.com. You get a fixed written price within 60 minutes during business hours.

Questions we get asked

My documents are from Turkey. Do I need a Kurmanji translator?

Only for the parts written in Kurmanji. Turkish civil registry extracts, identity cards and diplomas are Turkish-language documents and go to a Turkish translator. A Kurmanji linguist handles letters, statements, recordings and anything else the family wrote themselves, and we quote the two separately after reading what you send.

Why is Kurmanji written in Latin letters when Sorani uses Arabic script?

Because the modern Kurmanji alphabet was designed that way. Celadet Ali Bedirxan published it from Damascus in 1932 through the journal Hawar, and it became the standard for Kurmanji in Turkey, Syria and the diaspora. Kurmanji written inside Iraq and Iran, including Behdini, generally uses an Arabic-based script instead.

Our Syrian client has no birth certificate at all. Can anything be translated?

Yes, and it is often the whole case. Many Syrian Kurds were left out of the civil registry after the 1962 Hasakah census and never held state documents. We translate what exists, a UNHCR slip, a mukhtar's letter, an affidavit from someone with direct knowledge, describe each accurately, and say where no issuing authority exists rather than implying one does.

Can a Sorani interpreter cover a Kurmanji speaker at a hearing?

We do not recommend it and we will not book it as a match. Kurmanji keeps grammatical gender and case endings that Sorani has lost, and everyday vocabulary differs, so accuracy falls away exactly where testimony gets detailed. Tell us the speaker's home region and we assign a Kurmanji interpreter.