Transcription · Kurdish
Kurdish transcription services
Native Kurdish transcribers for corporate video, eLearning, legal proceedings and more. Verbatim and clean read transcripts, time-coded and delivered to professional and legal standards. Part of a full Kurdish language service: transcripts, subtitles, voice over, and translation of any content you need.
About Kurdish transcription
Where Kurdish is spoken and how it is written
Kurdish is spoken by around 29 million people across its varieties, in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the diaspora, of whom around 17 million speak Kurmanji and around 6.1 million Sorani.
Central Kurdish is an official language of Iraq alongside Arabic and the official language of the Kurdistan Region, with a standard based on the Silêmanî dialect. Kurmanji has official status in the autonomous administration in north-east Syria and recognised minority status in Armenia, but no single codifying academy, and orthographic practice differs between Iraq and Iran.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Kurdish transcribers who are native speakers, and we manage every step — file intake and brief, transcription, time-coding, formatting and final delivery — so the transcript you receive is accurate to the audio and ready for its intended use.
Choose your format
Three ways to transcribe the same recording
The right one depends on what the transcript is for. If you are not sure, tell us the use case and we will recommend it.
Full verbatim
Every wordCaptures every utterance, pause and non-standard pronunciation exactly as spoken, including false starts and overlap.
Best for
Legal proceedings, research interviews, compliance content
Clean read
EditedRemoves filler words, false starts and repeated phrases for readability, while keeping meaning and speaker intent intact.
Best for
Corporate video, interviews for publication, content to be translated
Summarised
Key pointsCondenses the discussion into structured key points rather than a full record of the conversation.
Best for
Executive briefings, legal summaries, research documentation
What's included
What comes with every Kurdish transcript
Kurdish, English, or both
A source transcript, an English translation, or the two side by side. The translation is produced from the original audio, not from the transcript alone.
Timecodes
Stamped at the interval you need — per speaker turn, per paragraph or at fixed intervals, matched to your edit or subtitle workflow.
Speaker identification
Every turn attributed, by name where you supply them or by role where you don't — including through overlap.
Proofreading pass
A second native Kurdish linguist reads the transcript against the audio before it reaches you.
Terminology kept
Legal, medical or technical vocabulary rendered to the convention your sector uses, not paraphrased.
Your format
Plain text, Word, PDF, SRT, VTT or a client-specific template — tell us the next step.
How it works
One project manager, from brief to delivery
A structured workflow, built so accuracy and confidentiality are verified at each stage rather than assumed at the end.
File intake and brief
We review your audio or video, confirm the transcript type (verbatim, clean read, time-coded), and note any terminology, speaker labels or formatting you need.
Transcriber assignment
We match your content to a native Kurdish transcriber with the right background, whether legal, medical, corporate or media.
Transcription and QA
The transcriber works directly from your files. A second linguist reviews the transcript against the audio for accuracy, speaker identification and consistency.
Delivery
Formatted transcripts in your chosen format, whether plain text, SRT, VTT or a client-specific template, on budget and on time.
For multi-speaker research, hearings or archive projects, we assign a coordinated team and agree milestones up front.
Who we work with
Industries that rely on Kurdish transcription
A written record is a compliance requirement in some sectors and an accessibility one in others. These are the Kurdish briefs we see most.
Legal & compliance
Hearings, depositions and arbitration, transcribed verbatim and formatted to requirement.
Automotive & electronics
Technical briefings, supplier negotiations and training material.
Broadcast & media
Interviews, documentaries and archive footage, with subtitle-ready templates.
Market research
Focus groups and interviews, including sessions with heavy speaker overlap.
Business & shared services
Client calls, process documentation and training material.
Academic & research
Lectures, field interviews and research material.
Confidentiality
Who hears your Kurdish audio
Kurdish transcription often means board material from a head office in the head office, arbitration, pre-release production audio or research interviews recorded on the understanding they stay private. So who hears it matters as much as how accurately it is captured.
Your files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named Kurdish transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We will sign your own confidentiality agreement, follow your retention rules, and delete everything on delivery if your policy requires it.
Encrypted upload
No loose files over email.
NDA as standard
Yours or ours, before we start.
No public AI tools
Your audio never trains anything.
Deletion on request
Files removed on delivery if you need it.
Kurdish specifics
A Kurdish transcript can read impeccably and still be wrong, because "Kurdish" is not one language, and the wrong one delivers the wrong alphabet
In ISO 639-3, `ku` is a macrolanguage, not a language: the IANA registry lists Northern Kurdish `kmr`, Central Kurdish `ckb` and Southern Kurdish `sdh` as separate individual languages, each carrying Kurdish as their macrolanguage.
They are not interchangeable in the room or on the page. The Linguistic Data Consortium's language documentation for Kurmanji states plainly that Kurmanji and Sorani are not mutually intelligible, and the grammars diverge structurally — Kurmanji keeps grammatical gender and case, which Central Kurdish has lost.
The scripts diverge too, so a Sorani recording returned as Latin text, or a Kurmanji recording returned in Arabic script, is a different deliverable from the one commissioned, regardless of how accurate the words are.
A brief that says only 'Kurdish' cannot be staffed or quoted: the variety, the region of the speaker and the target script all have to be established first.
Transcription rates
Professional Kurdish transcription
Best for clean read transcripts of corporate video, interviews and internal communications.
- Native Kurdish transcriber
- Verbatim or clean read
- Speaker identification
- Proofreading pass
A complete managed service for legal proceedings, multi-speaker research and longer-form content requiring verbatim, time-coded or translated deliverables.
- Everything in Standard
- Subject-specialist linguist
- Timecodes and speaker IDs
- Kurdish and English in one pass
Priced by runtime, audio quality, number of speakers and turnaround, and backed by our Price Match Promise. Send us a sample for an exact, no-obligation quote.
Trusted by global brands
We have used GoLocalise on a regular basis for projects in a number of languages. The service we receive is great. The team is always friendly and professional. The voiceovers we receive are of a very high quality and the turnaround is extremely quick. We are very happy to recommend GoLocalise to other businesses.
It was a pleasure to work with David and the team at GoLocalise. David gave me lots of help and advice, guiding me through my first subtitling project. He really knows his stuff! The experience was completely pain-free. I would not hesitate to recommend GoLocalise – outstanding work at a good price.
They're reliable, adaptive and obsessed with quality. And while you can never be 100% guaranteed of perfection, you can be sure GoLocalise will go the extra mile to get it right every time. We've worked with them now for over 5 years and we are truly thankful to have such a strong localisation partner for our business.
Related services
What happens after the transcript
Transcription in more languages
Native transcribers for interviews, meetings, research, media and legal material. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Most common questions
My file is labelled only "Kurdish". What do you need from me?
The variety and the target script. Kurmanji, Sorani and Southern Kurdish hold separate ISO 639-3 codes under the Kurdish macrolanguage, and they are transcribed by different people into different alphabets. If the label is all you have, we identify the variety from a sample before quoting.
Can a Kurmanji transcriber work on Sorani audio?
As a rule, no. Published language documentation describes the two as not mutually intelligible, and they differ in grammar as well as vocabulary — Kurmanji marks gender and case, Central Kurdish does not. Assigning one to the other produces guesswork rather than a transcript.
Can you deliver Sorani in Latin script, or Kurmanji in Arabic script?
Yes, but it is a separate decision from the transcription itself and has to be specified. Kurmanji in Iraq and Iran is written in Perso-Arabic, and Latin spelling for Sorani is used but not settled, so the script has to follow your audience rather than a default.
How will the finished Kurdish transcript be delivered?
In whatever the next step needs: plain text, Word, PDF, SRT, VTT or your own template, with timecodes and speaker labels set the way you want them. Tell us what happens to the transcript after we send it and we format it for that, not for us.
Is my audio kept confidential?
Yes. Files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We can sign your own confidentiality agreement, work to your retention rules and delete everything on delivery.
How much does transcription cost?
Every file is quoted on its own terms. Runtime, audio quality, how many people are speaking, the turnaround you need and whether you also want a translation all move the figure, so there is no flat per-minute rate that would be honest across all of them. Send us a sample and we will come back with an exact, itemised number, backed by our Price Match Promise.
How quickly can you deliver?
Most short files come back within 24 to 48 hours. Length, audio quality and whether you need time-coding or full verbatim all affect it, and a large multi-speaker project is scheduled rather than rushed. Your project manager confirms the timeline before work starts, not after.
Ready to transcribe your Kurdish audio?
Send us the files and tell us where the transcript will end up — we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
Professional voice over services for your audio and video productions
Voice over
- State-of-the-art studios
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Translation
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Subtitling
- Experienced subtitlers
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Transcription
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