Cal Interpreting &amp; Translations (CIT) offers Farsi interpreters and translators with legal, medical and specialty experience, including criminal and civil matters, employee meetings, engineering, patent cases, labor disputes, immigration and more.

Although based in Los Angeles, CIT offers comprehensive Farsi language services including interpretation, translation and transcription, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, worldwide. Our interpreters and translators are native speakers who have been screened, certified, have provided credentials, have been field tested, and have kept up to date with developments in both English and the Farsi language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Farsi language interpreters and translators possess in-depth knowledge of the Farsi language, as well as of the culture and history of the Farsi people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.
<h3><strong>The Farsi Language</strong></h3>
The Persian language, which is also known as Farsi, is part of the Indo-European family of languages, particularly the Iranian branch. Many, including the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, actually prefer that the language be referred to as Persian instead of Farsi. This may be due to the fact that the country’s official name was Persia until 1935, even though the people of Persia had called their country “Iran” since the Sassanid Period, from 226-651 AD. However, the language is referred to as Farsi in English and other languages. Farsi is spoken by about 110 million people worldwide, with most speakers living in Iran. It is the official language of Iran. Other countries where the Farsi language is spoken include, Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Azerbaijan. Approximately 50 million of the 110 million worldwide speakers speak Farsi as their second language. Two varieties of Farsi, Dari and Tajik, are also the official languages of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. More modern Farsi is far from Middle and Old Persian, which were both former languages of the Persian region (Fars), located in southwestern Iran. Therefore, it is known as Farsi.  Farsi is written in Arabic letters and has many Arabic loanwords.

With ancient Mongolian and Turkish rulers, Persian was used as the language of government in Turkey, parts of Asia and India for many centuries and even in Kashmir until just after the 1900s.

Old Persian was spoken until about 3rd century BC and written in cuneiform. Middle Persian, which was spoken from 3<sup>rd</sup> BC to 9<sup>th</sup> century BC, is written in epigraphic texts and Aramaic script. During this time, there was literature written, which discussed the Zoroastrian and Manichaean religions. Middle Persian was officially known as Pahlavi and was the language of the Sasanian empire. In 642 AD, Arabic became the official language of government and religion and the Farsi language adapted the Arabic alphabet. Tajik, a dialect of Farsi spoke in Tajikstan, was written using the Cyrillic alphabet ever since 1940. From 1928 to 1940, it was written in the Latin alphabet. Before then, it was written with the Perso-Arabic alphabet.

Farsi grammar today is different and far simpler than older Farsi forms of the language. Today, the language does not have many of the inflectional systems of the Old Farsi language. The only form of case inflection that Modern Farsi has are markers on nouns and pronouns that are direct objects. Verbs have personal endings, similarly found in other Indo-European languages. Prefixes and infixes are used to describe tense, mood, voice and the negative.

The Farsi language used the <em>abjad</em> writing system, which includes letters only as consonants. Vowels are represented with diacritics or a blend consonant letters. The Farsi language is written horizontally from right to left and numbers are written from left to right.