Translating books from Turkish to English
Kitabs translates books as a whole, not paragraph by paragraph. Every chapter goes through a complete editorial cycle — translation, source-check audit, literary editing and proofreading — and comes out as publication-ready English with each footnote precisely where it belongs.
The traps hidden in Turkish grammar
Turkish uses the Latin alphabet, which tempts people into thinking it is an easy language for machines. It is the opposite. Turkish is agglutinative: a single word such as "anlatamadıklarımızdan" carries what English needs a whole clause to say — "one of the things we could not explain". Long suffix chains are exactly where generic AI translators lose track of who did what to whom. Scholarly and historical Turkish adds another layer: Ottoman-era loanwords and honorifics that demand a translator aware of register. Kitabs parses suffix chains so grammatical relations survive intact, and renders Ottoman vocabulary with the precision English-language Turkology expects. Both religious and secular books are supported — secular prose runs through a neutral literary profile, while religious works receive canonical treatment of Quranic quotations, inserted from an established English translation with sura and verse numbers.
- Agglutinative suffix chains resolved without losing grammatical relations
- Ottoman-era loanwords and honorifics rendered with the right register
- Secular books handled through a neutral literary profile
Footnotes: the numbering is sacred
Turkish academic publishing makes heavy use of footnotes — source citations, archival references, translator's notes in critical editions. When an ordinary AI tool processes such a book chapter by chapter, the notes get renumbered from scratch each time or vanish altogether, and the citation structure collapses. Kitabs keeps the author's numbering exactly: footnote No. 474 in the Turkish original is footnote No. 474 in the English edition, still attached to the same sentence. Source references are never dropped and never reshuffled, and deliberate gaps in the numbering are respected rather than "fixed".
- Original footnote numbers preserved end to end
- Each note anchored to its exact position in the text
- Citations and references carried over without loss
How it works
Four steps separate your Turkish manuscript from a typeset-ready English book, with the price known up front.
- 1. Upload the book as PDF, DOCX or scans — OCR is included.
- 2. The system analyses the text and shows the exact price before you pay anything.
- 3. Translation runs chapter by chapter; you watch progress live and accept or amend every editorial change.
- 4. The output is an assembled book, footnotes intact, ready for typesetting.
Translation example
İmam Nevevî'nin belirttiği gibi, ilim bedenin rahatıyla elde edilmez.¹
As Imam al-Nawawi noted, knowledge is not attained through the comfort of the body.¹
The footnote number stays exactly as it appears in the original.
Questions and answers
How much does translating a book from Turkish to English cost?
The price is calculated automatically from the book's size before any work starts. Upload the file to see the exact figure for free — payment comes only after your confirmation.
Can Kitabs handle both religious and secular Turkish books?
Both are fully supported. Secular prose — fiction, history, popular science — goes through a neutral literary profile, while religious texts get canonical handling of Quranic quotations, inserted from an established English translation rather than machine-translated.
What happens to footnotes?
Footnotes keep their original numbering and their anchors in the text. A source the author cites in footnote 212 is still footnote 212 in the English edition.
How long does a book translation take?
A mid-sized book is done in hours, not months. You see the exact estimate right after upload; it depends on the book's length and the editing depth you choose.
Can I check the quality before paying for the whole book?
The upload, the price estimate and a sample fragment are all free. You pay only if the result satisfies you.
Is the service suitable for publishers?
A team mode is built in: translator, editor and proofreader work on one book, each at their own stage, with fragment hand-off and a full change history.