Georgian translation services

Georgian translation services Diskusija offers

Diskusija’s professional Georgian translation services stand out on account of the hard work of our committed project managers and carefully selected team of translators. Our expert linguists specialise in various professional fields and consistently work to the very highest standards. Their expertise and our streamlined workflows allow us to provide fast, efficient, top-quality Georgian translation services across a range of content types.

Our Georgian translation projects mainly comprise the following language pairs

English to Georgian
German to Georgian
French to Georgian
Russian to Georgian

Regardless, don't hesitate to get in touch for projects involving translation between Georgian and any other language.

Do you have a Georgian project?

Let’s talk about it

About the Georgian language

The Georgian language (or “Kartuli ena” as native speakers call it) is spoken mainly in Georgia, a country in the Caucasus region, where it is an official state language. There are around 4 million people in Georgia, whose primary language is Georgian. Another half million speakers live abroad.

The Georgian language is classified as a South Caucasian or Kartvelian language. Other languages of this family are Mingrelian, Laz and Svan. Georgian is the most pervasive language of them all. They are mostly spoken in the Caucasus mountain range and all of them are considered to have a single common proto-language.

Modern language: alphabet, vocabulary, spelling, grammar

Modern Georgian uses the Mkhedruli script, which is also the writing system for Mingrelian, Svan, and sometimes Laz.

The Mkhedruli letters correspond to the sounds of the spoken language, which makes it simple and economical. It also has no parallel in any other language and, therefore, is one of the 14 existing alphabets in the world.

Mkhedruli had 41 letters, but 8 of them are no longer used. There are no capital letters in Mkhedruli. Sometimes ordinary letters are scaled to function as capitals.

Georgian has up to 17 known dialects, which can be divided into two main groups: an eastern and a western group.

The structure of sentences in Georgian is subject-verb-object. But this is not as strict as in, for example, English. The order subject-object-verb can be found in Georgian.

There are no grammatical genders and no articles in Georgian. It has seven noun cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative.

The Georgian verbal system is quite complex. Linguists prefer to use the term “screeve” instead of terms such as “tense”, “aspect”, “mood”, to distinguish between different time frames and moods of the verbal system. A screeve is a set of six verb forms inflected for person and number.

Verbs are traditionally divided into four classes: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs.

Georgian has an abundant word derivation system. Many words are constructed by adding prefixes and suffixes to the root. For example, from the root kart, the words such as Kartveli (a Georgian person), Kartuli (the Georgian language) and Sakartvelo (Georgia) can be derived.

History of the Georgian language

The history of Georgian is very rich and old. Linguists think Georgian separated from other South Caucasian languages in the first millennium BC. The first hint of spoken Georgian in written sources is a passage of the Roman grammarian Marcus Cornelius Fronto in the second century AD.

The evolution of written Georgian is connected with the coming of Christianity in the fourth century. The new literary language was built on already established cultural infrastructure. The first written records date from the fifth century AD. The oldest Georgian literary work is the “Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik” (Tsamebay tsmidisa Shushanikisi dedoplisay) by Iakob Tsurtaveli.

The best known monument of the Georgian language is probably the national epic, “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” (Vepkhistqaosani) written by Shota Rustaveli in the 12th century.

The history of Georgian is usually divided into periods: the Old Georgian period, which lasted from the 5th to the 11th century AD, Middle Georgian (12th-18th) and Modern Georgian (19th-present).

Since the beginning of the Old Georgian period, the written Georgian language has developed three different scripts, all of which were written from left to right. The first was Asomtavruli. Later, in the ninth century, Nuskhuri, the ecclesiastical alphabet appeared. Both of them were also used to form Khutsuri, where Asomtavruli alphabet letters served as capital letters and Nuskhuri – as small letters.

The modern Mkhedruli alphabet first appeared in the 11th century.

In 1918, when Georgia gained independence from Russia, Georgian became an official language for the first time. Georgia was occupied by the Soviet Union three years later and the Russian language was promoted, but the Georgian language sustained its official status during these times. In 1991, Georgia regained independence and Georgian language became the sole official language.

Need a quote for a Georgian project?

Submit a request