Afghan translators: Dari to English for UK documents
Searching for an Afghan translator, or for Dari translated into English? Dari (دری) is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, alongside Pashto, under Article 16 of the 2004 constitution, and it is the language of most Afghan civil documents. Our Afghan translators work from Dari into English for the Home Office, UKVI, solicitors, universities and UK courts, and from English into Dari when a document needs to be read by a Dari speaker.
A certified translation of a single Afghan document, such as a tazkira, costs from £45. Standard delivery is 48 to 72 hours, with 24-hour and 12-hour options for tight deadlines. Longer documents, including asylum statements and court files, are priced per word. Get an instant quote for document translation, or contact us if you need a Dari interpreter, which we always quote in writing.
Many Afghan documents are bilingual: the electronic tazkira, for example, carries its printed field labels in Dari, Pashto and English, with the entries themselves in Dari or Pashto. We translate both, so you do not need two translators for one document.
Our Dari translators
Every Dari translation is completed by a native speaker from Afghanistan who lives in the UK and translates Afghan documents week in, week out. We select translators for their qualifications, their command of official Dari, and their knowledge of Afghan paperwork under successive governments, from handwritten paper tazkiras to the electronic tazkira issued by the National Statistics and Information Authority since 2018.
Work is checked before it is certified. Under our ISO 17100 certified process, a second qualified linguist revises each translation against the source, and your project manager checks names, dates and numbers. Solar Hijri dates are converted to the Gregorian calendar with the original kept alongside, names are spelt to match any existing UK documents, and Afghan naming conventions, such as a single name or a father's name recorded in place of a surname, are carried across exactly as they appear rather than corrected. Lingo Service is ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified and an ITI corporate member. Asylum and resettlement papers are handled in confidence by translators used to sensitive material.
Which Afghan documents we certify, and for which UK schemes
Afghan documents most often need certifying for ARAP and ACRS cases still being processed (both schemes closed to new applications on 1 July 2025), for an asylum claim, a family visa or a UK university place. The full list of Dari document types is further down this page.
Tazkira (تذکره), paper or electronic, is the core Afghan identity document and the one we certify most. We translate whichever version you hold, with every stamp, seal and handwritten entry carried across.
Each certified translation is delivered as one PDF (source, translation and certificate), issued on our letterhead, signed, dated and stamped, with a hard copy by tracked post if you need it.
Dari, Farsi or Pashto: which page do you need?
Dari is the Persian of Afghanistan and Farsi is the Persian of Iran. They are close relatives and speakers understand each other, but Afghan documents have their own vocabulary, formats and issuing bodies, so Afghan documents belong on this page and Iranian documents belong on our Farsi (Persian) translation page. Afghan documents written in Pashto, the country's other official language, go to our Pashto translation page; where a document carries both languages we translate both under one certificate.
Census 2021 counted 87,713 people in England and Wales with Persian or Farsi as their main language and 48,705 with Pashto; the census does not list Dari separately. Whatever the census calls it, if you have an Afghan document to translate, send us a photo or scan and we will confirm the language and the price before you order.
