Translating books from Persian to English
Kitabs works with whole books rather than detached paragraphs. Each chapter travels through a full editorial cycle — translation, a source-check audit, literary editing and final proofreading — so the English text arrives publication-ready, with every footnote in its rightful place.
Why Persian demands more than a generic translator
Persian is written right to left, and beneath its familiar-looking script hide constructions that routinely defeat automatic translators. The izafet chain — a cascade of linked nouns and adjectives — must be untangled correctly, or the English sentence assigns the wrong attribute to the wrong noun. Classical prose is laced with verse: a passage of Saadi, Hafez or Rumi may appear mid-argument, and a generic tool will flatten it into shapeless prose. Kitabs keeps such citations recognisable as poetry, preserves honorific formulas without turning them into stilted literalisms, and resolves izafet constructions so that relations between words survive the crossing into English. Where a Persian author quotes the Quran, the verse is inserted from an established canonical English translation, exactly as with Arabic sources — identified by sura and verse and never re-invented.
The scholarly apparatus, delivered untouched
Editions of Persian classics and modern scholarly works carry an apparatus that is easy to ruin: commentary notes, source references, cross-references to manuscripts. Standard AI pipelines lose notes at chapter boundaries or quietly restart the numbering — and a note the author numbered 474 emerges as 12. Kitabs preserves the original numbering as a matter of principle: number 474 stays number 474, gaps included, because the numbering itself is part of the edition. Each footnote remains anchored to the precise sentence it annotates, and source references are carried across without omission or reshuffling.
- Footnote numbers reproduced exactly as in the Persian original
- Notes stay tied to their exact anchor points in the text
- Source references and commentary are never silently dropped
From upload to finished book in four steps
You stay in control at every stage, and the full cost is visible before a single page is translated.
- 1. Upload the file — PDF, DOCX or scanned pages; OCR is built in.
- 2. The system analyses the book and displays the exact price before payment.
- 3. The translation moves chapter by chapter while you follow progress and accept or amend each editorial change.
- 4. The finished book is assembled with its complete footnote apparatus, ready for typesetting.
Translation example
سعدی میگوید: «منّت خدای را عزّ و جلّ که طاعتش موجب قربت است»¹
Saadi says: "Praise be to God, Mighty and Glorious, whose obedience brings one nearer to Him."¹
The footnote keeps the very number it carries in the original.
Questions and answers
How much does translating a book from Persian to English cost?
The cost is computed automatically from the size of the book before any work starts. You upload the file, receive the exact price for free, and pay only after you confirm.
Does Kitabs translate Quranic verses quoted in Persian texts?
Quranic quotations are inserted from an established canonical English translation rather than being machine-translated or composed anew. The system identifies each verse by sura and verse number and formats it properly.
What happens to footnotes?
Footnotes retain their original numbers and their exact anchors in the text. A source cited by the author in footnote 212 remains footnote 212 in the English edition.
How long does a book translation take?
A mid-sized book takes hours rather than months. The precise estimate appears after upload and depends on length and the editing depth you select.
Can I check the quality before paying for the whole book?
Uploading is free, and so are the price estimate and a sample fragment of the translation. Payment follows only when the result satisfies you.
Is the service suitable for publishers?
A team mode lets a translator, an editor and a proofreader work on one book, each at their own stage, with fragment hand-off between roles and a complete change history.