Pashto voice over services

Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, alongside Dari, and the majority language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. It is an Eastern Iranian language, which is worth stating plainly because it is often assumed to be a dialect of Persian: it is not. They belong to the same family and share the Perso-Arabic script, but they are separate languages and Pashto has letters neither Persian nor Arabic uses.

Its dialect split is easy to hear because it changes the name of the language itself. In the south-western variety, around Kandahar, it is Pashto. In the north-eastern variety, around Peshawar, it is Pakhto. Same word, same language, different consonant — and a listener places the reader in the first syllable. That is the question worth settling before casting rather than after.

The decision that most often gets missed happens earlier still, when someone writes the language list. Neither of Afghanistan's official languages covers the country on its own. A campaign recorded only in Pashto does not reach Dari-speaking audiences, and a Dari-only campaign does not reach Pashto speakers. We record both, and for national content we will usually recommend the pair rather than let you find out afterwards — our Dari Persian service is the other half, and our article on how Pashto, Dari and Farsi relate goes through the detail.

Pashto is written in the Perso-Arabic script, right to left, so subtitles, captions and any on-screen text have to be built for right-to-left layout rather than retrofitted onto a left-to-right design.

Typical work is humanitarian and NGO communications, public-health and mine-risk education, refugee and resettlement information, civic and government content, eLearning, and broadcast and diaspora media.