<h2>Aramaic Language Interpreters and Translators</h2>
            Cal Interpreting &amp; Translations (CIT) offers Aramaic 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 Aramaic 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, field tested, and kept up to date with developments in both English and the Aramaic language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Aramaic language interpreters and translators possess in depth knowledge of the Aramaic language, as well as of the culture and history of the Aramaic people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.
            <h2>Background</h2>
            The Aramaic language, which is a Semetic language of the Northern Central or Northwestern people, the Aramaeans, is most closely related to the Hebrew, Syriac and Phoenician languages. It was written in script that came from the Phoenician alphabet. The first appearance of the Aramaic language was in the late 11th century BC by the Arameans. It was accepted by the Assyrians in the 8th century as their second language. As the Assyrians deported mass amounts of people, Babylonian merchants helped to spread the language and by the 7th and 6th centuries, it bypassed Akkadian as the first language of the Middle East. Around the 6th century BC, it became the first langue of the Achaemenian Persian dynasty until 330 BE until Alexander the Great and his reign made Greek the official language throughout the once-Persian empire.

            Aramaic is known to be one of the languages of holy writings. It replaces Hebrew as the language of the Jews, starting in the 6th century BE. The books of Daniel and Ezra, which are books of the Bible, are written in Aramaic along with the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud. After the Jews defeated the Babylonians in 586 BC, Aramaic was used as the language of the common people, saving Hebrew for religion, government and the upper class. It is believed that Jesus and the Apostles spoke Aramaic. There are translations of the Old Testament in Aramaic as well. Aramaic was used worldwide until approximately 650 BC, when Arabic took its place.

            As early as the 1st and 2nd common era centuries, Aramaic was divided into East and West varieties. The Western Aramaic included dialects such as Nabatean and Palmyrene, spoken in Arabia and Palmyra, respectively along with Palestinian-Christian and Judeo-Aramaic. West Aramaic is spoken in a few villages in Syria till today. East Aramaic includes Syriac, Mandaean (the dialect of a gnostic sect found in Mesopotamia), Eastern Neo-Assyrian and is the Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud. Syriac was used extensively in literature between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Eastern Aramaic is spoke by certain groups of Christians in the Middle East, such as Jacobite and Nestorian Christians.
            <h2>Fun Facts about Aramaic</h2>
            <ul>
                <li>Likely to be the language Jesus Christ spoke</li>
                <li>The Dead Sea Scrolls are written in a variation of Aramaic</li>
                <li>Before Islam, the people of Bahrain only spoke Aramaic</li>
                <li>Alphabets from India and Southeast Asia have been thought to have used Aramaic as their source</li>
            </ul>