<h2>Urdu interpreters and translators</h2>
CIT offers Urdu 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 Urdu 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 Urdu language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Urdu language interpreters and translators possess in-depth knowledge of the Urdu language, as well as of the culture and history of the Urdu people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.
<h2>The Urdu Language</h2>
The Urdu language, an Indo-Aryan language, is spoken by about 170 million people. Around 70 million speak Urdu as a first language and the rest speak it as a second language. Urdu is spoken primarily in Pakistan and India, although only about 7.5% of Pakistanis list Urdu as their first language. However, it is also spoken on a smaller scale in Nepal, Bangladesh, South Africa, Mauritius, Guyana and other places. There are also speech communities in the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Urdu is also known as Modern Standard Urdu or Lashkari. In India, Urdu is spoken in specific areas such as Jammu, Kashmir and Maharashtra. It is also recognized in the Indian Constitution. There are three main dialects of Urdu. They are Dakhni, Rekhta and Modern Vernacular Urdu.

Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, can be often times mistaken with Hindi as it does share several similarities. Many vocabulary words in Urdu come from Persian and Arabic. On the other hand, Hindi has many words from Sanskrit. Many linguists believe that both Urdi and Hindi come from Hindustani (or Khari Boli), which would explain their similarities. Urdu means “language of the camp.” Some linguists believe there is evidence that referred to the language as Hindustani around the 1600s. Regardless, the language was most often referred to as Hindvi or Hindi until the early 1800s.

The Urdu language came to be around 1100s CE. It was a modus vivendi, or a mode of living, after the Muslim conquest. One of the first major writers of Urdu was a poet named Amir Khosrow, who lives from the mid 13<sup>th</sup> century to the early 14<sup>th</sup> century. The Urdu language is known to be a poetic one.

Perhaps the reason why Urdu and Hindi are mixed often is because they share a lot of components. They are both Indo-Aryan and have many similarities in phonology and grammar. However, Urdu has loanwords from Arabic and Persian whereas Hindi has loanwords from Sanskrit. Urdu uses the Nastaliq script, which is a Perso-Arabic script. Hindi used Devanagari. Both languages have similar phonics. Urdu is written from right to left. Unlike Arabic, Urdu is written following the Nasta’iq style of Persian writing. Because of its difficulty to type, Urdu newspapers were handwritten by professional calligraphers until as late as the 1980s. There is still one handwritten newspaper that is published every day in Chennai.