Urdu Retail & E-Commerce Translation

About the Urdu Language

The origin of the Urdu language is the Mughal Empire's word for army, Urdu. However, contrary to popular belief, Urdu was not created in the army camps of the Mughal Army. Urdu is spoken the same as present-day Hindi, but Hindi uses the traditional Devanagari script (a decedent of Sanskrit), whereas Urdu uses the Persio-Arabic alphabet.

The poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi coined the term Urdu for this language in 1780. However, this began to alienate the two major cultures in India/Pakistan, the Muslims and Hindus. Hindus began to speak and write Hindi, whereas Muslims would begin to speak Urdu.

In Pakistan, Urdu is mostly learned as a second or a third language as nearly 93% of Pakistan's population has a native language other than Urdu. Despite this, Urdu was chosen as a token of unity and as a lingua franca so as not to give any native Pakistani language preference over the other. Urdu is therefore spoken and understood by the vast majority in some form or another, including a majority of urban dwellers in such cities as Karachi, Lahore, Okara District, Sialkot, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Multan, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Jhang, Sargodha and Skardu. It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan although the people from differing provinces may have different indigenous languages, as from the fact that it is the "base language" of the country. For this reason, it is also taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems. This has produced millions of Urdu speakers from people whose native language is one of the other languages of Pakistan, who can read and write only Urdu. It is absorbing many words from the regional languages of Pakistan.

Although most of the population is conversant in Urdu, it is the first language of only an estimated 7% of the population who are mainly Muslim immigrants (known as Muhajir in Pakistan) from different parts of South Asia. The regional languages are also being influenced by Urdu vocabulary. There are millions of Pakistanis whose native language is not Urdu, but because they have studied in Urdu medium schools, they can read and write Urdu along with their native language. Most of the nearly five million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazarvi, and Turkmen) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdu. With such a large number of people(s) speaking Urdu, the language has acquired a peculiar Pakistani flavour further distinguishing it from the Urdu spoken by native speakers and diversifying the language even further.

Urdu Translation Expertise

Urdu and Hindi share a common grammatical structure (Hindustani) but Urdu draws its formal and literary vocabulary heavily from Arabic and Persian, particularly in legal, religious, and official contexts. The language uses SOV (subject-object-verb) word order, has grammatical gender affecting verb agreement, and employs an elaborate honorific system through pronoun choice and verb forms. Translating official Pakistani documents requires familiarity with Islamic legal terminology and administrative Urdu, which can differ markedly from conversational speech.

Urdu is written in a modified Perso-Arabic script (Nastaliq calligraphic style) that runs right to left and uses 39 basic characters. The Nastaliq style, with its diagonal baseline, is typographically complex and requires specialised fonts. Transliteration into Latin script is not standardised, and personal names may have multiple accepted English spellings.

Common Urdu Documents

Commonly translated documents include NADRA-issued birth certificates, nikahnama (Islamic marriage certificates), matric and intermediate examination certificates from Pakistani boards of education, and police character certificates from Pakistani authorities.

NAATI offers certification for Urdu translators, and there is a strong pool of certified practitioners across Australia given the sizeable Pakistani and Urdu-speaking community. Urdu NAATI-certified translations are routinely accepted by Australian government departments.

About the Urdu Language

Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible in everyday speech but diverge dramatically in formal registers — Urdu draws its literary vocabulary from Arabic and Persian while Hindi draws from Sanskrit, making their written forms look like completely different languages. The Nastaliq calligraphic style used for Urdu is so complex that it was one of the last major scripts to be successfully digitised for computers, not achieving good digital rendering until the early 2000s. Urdu is also one of only a handful of languages where the formal written name (اردو) is itself a loanword — "urdu" comes from Turkish meaning "army" or "camp."