Why Persian to English is harder than it looks
Persian uses the Arabic script but is not an Arabic language. The grammar is Indo-European, closer in structure to English than to Arabic, while the letters look the same. A system that assumes script equals language gets this pair wrong in a way that is hard to spot.
Ta’arof is politeness that means the opposite of what it says. An offer refused twice before being accepted, or قابل نداره meaning “it’s not worth paying for” when it certainly is, are social ritual rather than literal statements. Translated word for word into English, they mislead.
The verb goes at the end. Persian is subject-object-verb, so a long sentence resolves only at its final word. Translating in order produces English fragments, and negation in particular can arrive too late.
Poetry sits inside ordinary speech. Everyday Persian borrows imagery — دلم برایت تنگ شده, literally “my heart has grown tight for you” — where English would just say “I miss you.” Keeping the image sounds strange; dropping it loses the warmth.
Written by Hardik Vegad, Co-founder, Translatify. Last updated .
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