Persian (Farsi) Translation and Localization Services
Persian has been a core El Turco language since 2018. Native linguists translate, localize and test right-to-left content for Persian-speaking audiences and build Persian datasets for AI teams.
- Languages
- 19
- Languages
- Vetted Native Linguists
- 700+
- Vetted Native Linguists
- Localization Tasks / Year
- 100K+
- Localization Tasks / Year
- Founded
- 2016
- Founded
El Turco delivers Persian (Farsi) translation and localization services to enterprises, language service providers and AI teams building products for Persian-speaking users. Native Persian linguists work under ISO 17100 for translation and ISO 18587 for machine translation post-editing, with projects run from our production office in Istanbul and headquarters in London. Persian joined our core languages in 2018.
Persian localization is more than putting English into Arabic script. Persian runs right to left with its own letters and digits. It also relies on an invisible half space that much software mishandles. Our Persian team works in RWS Trados, memoQ, Phrase and XTM. What's Wrong?, our own QA tool, then checks every file for character and half-space errors before delivery.
Dialects and variants
Which Persian do we translate into?
Persian has three standard written varieties: Iranian Persian (Farsi), Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan. Our default target is Iranian Persian. Written Persian is formal and fairly uniform, while everyday speech, especially Tehran colloquial, differs a great deal from it.
Iranian Persian (Farsi)
The default target for software, websites, marketing, legal and technical content, following the spelling guidance of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature.
Dari (Afghanistan)
Mutually intelligible with Iranian Persian but different in vocabulary, spelling choices and tone. Content written for Afghan audiences needs a Dari review, which we confirm at scoping.
Tajik (Tajikistan)
Written in Cyrillic, not Arabic script. A Farsi translation cannot be reused for Tajik readers.
Script and layout
Writing system and layout notes
Persian uses a modified Arabic script written right to left. The alphabet adds four letters to Arabic (پ, چ, ژ and گ). Short vowels are normally left unwritten, so readers rely on context to know how a word is pronounced. Numbers inside Persian text still read left to right.
- Mirroring: navigation, directional icons, progress bars and tables flip for right-to-left layouts. Brand names, URLs and product codes inside a Persian sentence need bidirectional handling so punctuation stays in place.
- Digits: Persian has its own Eastern digits (۰ to ۹), and the shapes for four, five and six differ from Arabic-Indic digits. Each product chooses Persian or Western digits per context and keeps the choice consistent.
- Punctuation: the Persian comma (،) and question mark (؟) are reversed forms, and quotations usually take guillemets («»).
- Dates: Iran uses the Solar Hijri calendar, with the year starting at Nowruz in March and dates written year first (1405/08/13). The week starts on Saturday and Friday is the weekend.
- Currency: the rial is the official unit, but prices are often quoted in toman, equal to ten rials. Every price string must state which unit it uses.
- Fonts and length: Persian needs a font with full Persian glyph coverage and more line height than Latin text, and fixed-width buttons need room.
Localization pitfalls
What makes Persian localization different?
Concrete issues our Persian linguists and engineers check for on every project.
Persian versus Arabic characters
The letters yeh and kaf have separate Persian and Arabic code points that look almost identical on screen. Text typed on an Arabic keyboard or copied from Arabic sources breaks search, sorting and deduplication, so we normalize every delivery to Persian characters.
The half space
Persian uses the zero-width non-joiner, an invisible character that separates parts of one word, such as verb prefixes and the plural suffix -ha. Some CMS fields, string extractors and MT engines strip it and join letters wrongly. Our QA confirms half spaces survive the round trip.
Ezafe and placeholders
Nouns and their modifiers are linked by the ezafe, a short vowel that is usually unwritten but takes a written form after words ending in a vowel. When a variable sits inside a noun phrase, the linking form depends on its value, so we keep placeholders at phrase edges.
Formality: shoma versus to
Banks, public services and B2B software address users with formal "shoma" and plural verbs. Games and some consumer apps use informal "to". The register is set once per product and recorded in the style guide.
Written versus spoken Persian
Colloquial Persian shortens and reshapes many verb forms. Game dialogue, chatbots and voice interfaces need an agreed level of colloquial writing, because formal written Persian in a casual chat reads as stiff.
Plurals and word order
Nouns stay singular after a number, so ICU categories "one" and "other" often carry the same Persian text. Persian is verb-final, so English UI fragments that start with a verb are rebuilt as natural Persian phrases.
Loanwords and legal register
The Academy of Persian Language and Literature coins Persian equivalents for foreign terms, while tech users often prefer English or French loanwords. The register is agreed per product. Legal text uses a formal vocabulary rich in Arabic-origin terms and goes to a legal-domain linguist.
Industries
Which industries do we serve in Persian?
Industry pages describe the workflows; each one applies to Persian as summarized here.
Industry
Gaming & Esports
Mobile and PC games with right-to-left UI checks, colloquial dialogue decisions and in-build LQA.
Industry
E-Commerce & Retail
Catalogs, storefronts and campaigns with consistent digits, currency units and calendar dates.
Industry
Technology & IT
SaaS and mobile app UI, help centers and release notes, tested for bidirectional text.
Industry
Finance & Fintech
Fintech and payments content where numbers, dates and formal register must be exact.
Industry
Life Sciences
Clinical, regulatory and medical device documentation handled by domain linguists.
Services
Persian services we offer
Every service below is available in Persian. Pricing is per-word, hourly or project-based, quoted after scoping.
Translation & Localization
TEP translation
A native Persian translator plus a second native reviewer for editing and proofreading, under ISO 17100.
Translation & Localization
Software, website and game localization
String files, CMS content and game text with right-to-left layout checks.
Translation & Localization
MTPE
Post-editing under ISO 18587, starting with an engine evaluation and character normalization on your content.
Translation & Localization
Transcreation
Campaign copy, slogans and app store listings rewritten for Persian-speaking audiences.
Translation & Localization
LQA and testing
Native testers check the Persian build for mirroring errors, broken half spaces and truncation.
Integrations
Continuous localization
Hub pulls Persian strings from your TMS or repository and pushes approved translations back automatically.
AI Data Solutions
AI training data
Persian speech, annotation, RLHF and parallel corpora built to your guidelines.
Persian services in depth
Game
Persian Game Localization
Persian in-game text, right-to-left UI, store pages and in-build LQA for mobile, PC and console titles, in formal or colloquial Farsi.
E-commerce
Persian E-Commerce Localization
Persian product catalogs, right-to-left storefronts, checkout and campaigns by native Farsi linguists, with MTPE for large catalogs.
Software
Persian Software Localization
Persian UI strings, right-to-left review, half-space and character QA, help content and release notes for SaaS and enterprise software.
AI data
Persian AI Training Data
Farsi speech, annotation, RLHF, moderation and MT datasets built by native speakers, with Persian character normalization and agreement reports.
AI training data
Persian AI training data
Persian has far less training data than English, and web text is noisy: mixed Persian and Arabic characters, missing half spaces and Finglish (Persian typed in Latin letters). Models trained on raw data inherit those errors. El Turco builds Persian datasets for teams fixing that: speech collection covering formal and colloquial speech, transcription, text annotation for intent, sentiment and entities, RLHF ranking of Persian model responses, moderation data that covers slang and Finglish and parallel corpora for custom MT or LLM fine-tuning. Guidelines are co-written with the client, normalization rules are fixed before production, gold tasks run first and inter-annotator agreement is reported with every delivery. A free Persian pilot batch lets your team check the data before scaling up.
Related languages
Languages that regularly appear in the same project plan.
Language
Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects for software, games, e-commerce and finance, with RTL testing and Arabic AI training data.
Language
Kurdish
Kurmanji and Sorani translation, localization and AI training data, with the right script for each audience and right-to-left testing for Sorani.
Language
Azerbaijani
Native Azerbaijani linguists for software, game, e-commerce and finance content in the Latin script, plus Azerbaijani AI training data.
Language
Turkish
Our home language: native Turkish linguists in Istanbul for software, game, e-commerce and marketing content, plus Turkish AI training data.
FAQ
Persian translation FAQ
Do you translate into Persian from languages other than English?
Yes. Source languages for Persian projects at El Turco are English, German, French, Chinese, Turkish and Arabic. Persian into English is covered as well. Turkish and Arabic sources suit companies already operating in the region, while German and French sources are typical for industrial and technical documentation. Other source languages are quoted case by case after a short scoping conversation.
Is Farsi the same language as Persian?
Farsi is the name speakers in Iran use for their language, and Persian is the usual English name for the same language. Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan are standard varieties of Persian with their own vocabulary and conventions. Tajik is written in Cyrillic. El Turco translates into Iranian Persian by default and confirms the target variety at scoping.
How do you handle Persian right-to-left text in software?
Persian right-to-left text is handled in two stages. Linguists translate the strings in context and keep placeholders, tags and Latin terms intact. Native testers then check the running build for mirrored layouts, bidirectional text errors, broken half spaces, wrong digits and truncation. Developers receive a screenshot and a fix for each issue, so the Persian interface reads correctly before release.
Is machine translation good enough for Persian?
Machine translation for Persian works for some content but still misses ezafe links, drops half spaces and mixes formal with colloquial forms. El Turco offers Persian MTPE under ISO 18587. A sample of your content is machine translated and scored first, then the post-editing level is agreed and native linguists edit the output. Marketing, legal and interface text is better served by human translation.
Who translates Persian at El Turco?
Persian translation at El Turco is done by native Persian linguists chosen for their subject domain, with project managers in Istanbul coordinating each job. A second linguist reviews every translation under ISO 17100. Linguists sign NDAs and work in the client CAT tool or ours, and information security follows ISO/IEC 27001, so files stay inside controlled systems.
How do I start a Persian localization project?
A Persian localization project starts with the contact form: share the content type, volume, source language, target variety and timeline. Enterprises can start with a free pilot; LSPs can ask for a free 300-word test translation. We then agree the glossary and style guide, the digit and calendar conventions and the delivery rhythm. Pricing is per-word, hourly or project-based, quoted after scoping.
Planning Persian Content?
Tell us what Persian content you have, how much of it and when it is due. We reply with a scoped plan and can start with a free pilot or a free 300-word test translation.