Pashto Translation Services

Where Pashto is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Pashto, also written Pakhto or Pushto, is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, alongside Dari, and in Pakistan it is the main language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and of the north of Balochistan. It has more than 40 million speakers, most of them in these two countries, and large communities in the Gulf, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and the United States. Since 2021, tens of thousands of Afghan families have resettled in the United States, and most Pashto documents we receive are needed there. The destination decides the type of translation.

Pashto translation services for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Pashto is one language, but the Pashto of Kandahar and the Pashto of Peshawar differ in sounds and in everyday words, and Afghan and Pakistani documents follow different models. A good translation reads every letter of the original and keeps every detail of the record.

• Alphabet: Pashto is written from right to left in an alphabet based on Arabic script, with more than 40 letters, including letters that Arabic and Persian do not have, such as ټ, ډ, ړ, ښ and څ. The translation reads each one correctly, also in handwritten records.
• South and North: the Pashto of the South, around Kandahar, and of the North, around Peshawar, differ in some sounds. The letter ښ sounds like sh in Kandahar and like kh in Peshawar, which is why the same language is called Pashto in one region and Pakhto in the other.
• Names: many Afghans have no family surname, and the tazkira identifies the person by the given name, the father’s name and the grandfather’s name. The same name can be spelled Mohammad, Muhammad or Mohammed in English, so the translation follows the spelling in the passport when there is one; tell us the form used in your US documents when you order.
• Dates and numbers: Afghan documents carry dates in the Hijri calendars used in Afghanistan, the solar one (hijri shamsi), in which the year 1405 began in March 2026, or the lunar one, and they often write the Eastern Arabic numerals in their Persian form (۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹). The translation reproduces each date exactly as it is in the original.
• Documents: the national ID card (tazkira, تذکره) and its electronic version (e-tazkira), the birth certificate, the marriage certificate and school records follow Afghan national models, and many are printed in Dari and Pashto on the same page. The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note.