Employment documentation from the technology sector
Bengaluru generates a distinct category of work in this pair: employment and experience letters for skilled migration, principally to North America, Australia and Europe.
These are assessed by matching described duties to a defined occupation code, and assessors are strict. A letter saying someone “worked as a Software Engineer and performed related duties” gives an assessor nothing to match. One describing specific systems designed, built and tested does.
Where such letters are issued in Kannada, or where supporting documents are, the translation has to render technical duties in the vocabulary of the field rather than a loose paraphrase. An Indian job title with no clear foreign counterpart is translated literally, with the described duties carrying the weight, rather than substituted for a foreign title that may map to a different code.
If the letter has not yet been issued, ask the employer to describe duties specifically. That is more effective than anything a translator can do afterwards.
RTC and pahani land records
Karnataka’s record of rights, tenancy and crops — commonly called the RTC or pahani — is the operative land document and a regular request, usually from families managing inherited property from abroad.
It is densely tabular. Survey numbers, extent, classification, tenancy entries and mutation history each occupy defined positions, and the position carries meaning. We preserve the table structure exactly rather than reflowing it into prose, because an official reads it by column.
Extent is recorded in acres and guntas. A gunta is a subdivision unfamiliar outside India, and silently converting to a decimal figure discards precision the original carries. We keep the original units and supply a conversion in a note, so the reader sees both.
Older entries are frequently handwritten. Where a figure in a share or an extent is ambiguous we ask rather than guess — these numbers determine entitlements.
Script identification
Kannada and Telugu descend from a common script and look alike to a reader of neither. Documents reach us labelled as the wrong language often enough to be worth mentioning.
Send a photograph and we will identify it before quoting. It costs nothing and prevents the document going to a translator who cannot read it.
Certificates for internal purposes
Karnataka issues caste, income and residence certificates intended for domestic administrative use. They sometimes accompany applications abroad as supporting evidence.
These are translated literally, with the issuing authority and stated purpose rendered precisely. We do not map an Indian community category onto a foreign concept, because none corresponds.
Names and what to send
Kannada name transliteration presents the familiar difficulty — several defensible English spellings for one name, producing mismatches against a passport. Many Karnataka names also carry a place or family prefix rendered as an initial, handled inconsistently by passports.
Send the passport page with every document. Photograph complete pages including seals, edges and reverse sides, and for RTC extracts photograph flat and square rather than at an angle, since skewed tables are materially harder to read accurately.