Hindi Translation

Hindi can be typed directly into Microsoft Office programs, so our English to Hindi translations are frequently supplied to clients as a Word file, generally with an accompanying pdf.

However very few Hindi fonts come pre-installed on Mac or Windows, so style options are limited.

Historically, many different Hindi fonts and keyboard input systems were developed, mainly for use on Windows. These typically required the font and the input program to be installed on your computer. But fonts developed for one system were seldom compatible with those of other systems.

Today we avoid these issues by using Hindi Unicode fonts.

Our English to Hindi translator team can handle all types of materials and texts, including translating technical documents. Projects will often also involve typesetting our translation and providing finalised Hindi artwork - see section below.

Most Hindi translation work is supplied as quality-assured translations but clients can also opt for our budget professional translation service. This is more economical but has a lesser level of quality control.

In the other direction, our Hindi to English translation service encompasses documents of all types for both business and individual clients wanting personal documents translated.

The Hindi language

  • Hindi is an official language of the Federal Government of India
  • It is an official language in 9 of the 28 Indian states (there are 23 official languages in India)
  • Hindi is the most widely used language in India
  • It is considered the world's fourth most spoken language with over 300 million speakers
  • It is written using the Devanagari script, distinctive in that it has a horizontal line running along the top of letters

Hindi translation with typesetting

We strongly recommend you use us for any Hindi typesetting you need.

That's because there are several things that can go wrong, and specifics you need to know. Hindi typesetting takes special expertise and knowledge.

Here are the main issues we typically have to deal with:

  • Font issues. Relatively few fonts render all letter combinations correctly in InDesign and Illustrator. A font that's fine in Word may not be usable for graphic design.
  • Text display issues. There are specific settings needed in graphic programs to get Hindi and other Indic language text to display correctly. Even then it's not unheard of for specific letter combinations to be incorrect.
  • English text and punctuation. If these are included in the Hindi translation, they will default as gibberish Hindi letters, and need to be individually corrected.
  • Numbers. The correct digit set must be selected.
  • Leading. Hindi text takes up much more vertical space than English. Letters are taller and can have both upper and lower diacritic (accent) marks. Leading (line spacing) needs to be increased accordingly, with care taken to ensure lower diacritics on one line don't overlap the upper diacritics on the next line.
  • Space issues. With the greater leading needed, point sizes may have to be reduced in tight spaces. But this can make the text too small for easy reading. Occasionally design or layout may need to be amended to achieve a satisfactory result.

Hindi text showing upper and lower diacritics
With diacritics both above and below the line, Hindi text needs greater leading (vertical line space) than many languages - which can be an issue for typesetting.

There are solutions to all of these issues, but it does require specific know-how and rigorous checking and proofing. Along with Thai and Arabic translations, Hindi is one of the more challenging typesetting languages and should always be left to the experts.

We've been providing error free, professional standard Hindi typesetting and artwork for many years. We suggest you engage us for any Hindi translation and typesetting requirements you might have.

Our multilingual typesetting page details our processes and quality control steps for foreign language typesetting and dtp.

Other Indian language translations

Besides Hindi, we also translate between English into all other major Indic languages. Our principal languages and pairings are:

  • Tamil translation, and particularly Tamil to English translation
  • Punjabi translation, particularly English to Punjabi translation
  • English to Nepali translation
  • Sinhalese translation, with greater volume in Sinhalese to English translation than into Sinhalese
  • Bangla (Bengali) translation
  • English to Gujarati translation

Let us quote your Hindi project!

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    An example of our Hindi translation and typesetting work:


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