The Kazakh language is mother language for about 8-8.3 million people. The Language Law adopted in the Kazakh SSR on September 22, 1989 has introduced a term of the ‘national language’ and the Kazakh language was given the status of the state language. All the paperwork was officially translated into Kazakh in five regions of Kazakhstan (Atyrau Oblast, Zhambyl Oblast, Kyzylorda Oblast, Mangistau Oblast, South-Kazakhstan Oblast) by 2006. Since then, written translation of documents from Russian into Kazakh is becoming more relevant every year. The Russian-Kazakh translation acquires greater relevance for various translation agencies especially.
However, this process has given birth to small problems. Main difficulties facing translators when performing translations from the Russian language into the Kazakh language are represented by a lack of a clearly systematic terminological base and a lack of well-composed specialized dictionaries. Sometimes a translator himself has to ‘invent’ a particular term, which often results in confusion in reverse translation from the Kazakh language into the Russian one.
New terms and phrases regularly appear in Kazakh dictionaries. Moreover, domestic language experts have made decision to translate foreign words into the Kazakh language, including international words. All this creates additional confusion and muddle in translation environment. One should not jump to accusations against a translator since it’s not always his fault, but a lack of clearly determined terms. In addition to this, any translated document requires mandatory proofreading by other translator or a field expert.
When translating from Kazakh, one should keep in mind that the Kazakh and Russian languages are different from each other to a large extent. So we can say that Kazakh texts have no prepositions, but have postpositions. Another difference is a lack of coordination between adjective and noun by case and number.
Clear and understandable translation is perhaps the most important criterion to translations both from the Kazakh language into the Russian language and from Russian into Kazakh.
Terminology systematization for the Kazakh language is a big task in future for many linguists, translators and experts in this field. In turn we as a translation bureau, where the Kazakh language accounts for the lion’s share in all orders placed, also seek to contribute to the development of the language through a high-quality and competent translation and take into account all the requirements of our customers and sometimes give translation advices for a particular terminology.