Amharic Translation Services

Where Amharic is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Amharic is a working language of the federal government of Ethiopia, the official language of the Amhara region and the everyday language of Addis Ababa. It has more than 30 million native speakers, and millions more in Ethiopia speak it as a second language. Large communities also live abroad: in the United States, from the Washington, D.C. area to Little Ethiopia in Los Angeles, and in Canada, Israel, Italy and the Gulf countries. The destination decides the type of translation.

Amharic translation services for documents from Ethiopia

Amharic has regional varieties, such as those of Gondar, Gojjam, Wollo and Shewa, and the standard written language follows the speech of Addis Ababa. What changes most from one document to another is not the dialect but the script, the names and the calendar, and a good translation reads each of them correctly.

• Script: Amharic is written in the Ge’ez script, called fidel, in which each character joins a consonant and a vowel. It has more than 30 basic characters, each in seven forms, so ለ, ሉ, ሊ, ላ, ሌ, ል and ሎ are lä, lu, li, la, le, lə and lo.
• Names: Ethiopians have no family surname. A person has a given name, followed by the father’s given name and often the grandfather’s, as in Abebe Bikila, and a married woman keeps her own name. US forms usually treat the father’s name as the last name, so tell us the form used in your US documents when you order.
• Spelling in Latin letters: there is no single way to write Amharic names in English, so the same person can appear as Tesfaye or Tesfay, and Haile or Hayle. The translation keeps every name exactly as in the original, and the spelling of your passport is the reference.
• Calendar and time: Ethiopian documents use the Ethiopian calendar, with twelve months of 30 days and a thirteenth month, Pagume, of 5 or 6 days. The year begins on September 11, or September 12 in some years, and runs 7 or 8 years behind the Gregorian one, so 23 Meskerem 2019 is October 3, 2026. Hours are counted from 6 in the morning, so 1 o’clock in Ethiopian time is 7 a.m.
• Documents: the birth certificate, the marriage certificate, court decisions and the ID card issued by the kebele, the local administration office, are the most common, and many recent records are bilingual in Amharic and English. The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note.