Uzbek is the state language of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

   Uzbek is a language of the Turkic system. There are people using Uzbek out of Uzbekistan (in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan) and this is an important fact when it comes to translations from and to Uzbek. There are approximately 22 million Ethnic Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and for more than 99% of them Uzbek is their mother tongue. In Afghanistan there are more than 2 million Uzbeks, in Tajikistan – more than half a million Uzbeks, and in Kyrgyzstan – more than eight hundred thousand Uzbeks.

   Together with Turkish and Azeri, Uzbek is among the three most popular Turkic languages. This shows the importance of translations from and to Uzbek.

   Colloquial Uzbek has a number of dialects and sub-dialects divided into five groups. There are no significant differences between the dialects and Uzbeks using different dialects understand each other easily. Thus Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and abroad (except the Uzbeks in Afghanistan) successfully use a common Uzbek literary language, which is essential for the translations from and to Uzbek.

   In the Uzbek language, unlike other Turkic languages (Turkish, Azeri), there is no will sinharmonizm (assimilation of the vowels in the word). Uzbek phonetics, grammar and vocabulary are influenced by the Persian language; in the Uzbek vocabulary there are many Arabic and Russian borrowed words. This is important for the translation from and to Uzbek.

   The Uzbek language has a centuries-old written tradition as an Asian Turkic language (old-Uzbek language), the official language of the country of Timor. Old-Uzbek has been influenced by various Turkic languages and the Persian language. During XV - XVI century the literature in Turkic language in Central Asia flourished. The poetic peak of the old-Uzbek language is the works of Alisher Navoi.

   The modern literary Uzbek is the basis of Ferghana - Tashkent dialects of the Uzbek language. Until 1930 Uzbek was written in Arabic script, then in 1930-1939 in Latin script, and from 1939 – based on Russian script with additional letters. From 1992, along with the Russian script, Latin script was reinstated.

   When translating from and to Uzbek, one should bear in mind the fact that Uzbeks living in different countries use different scripts. Uzbeks in the CIS countries (except Turkmenistan) and the Baltic countries use Cyrillic script. Those in Turkey, Europe and America use Latin script. And those in China, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arab countries use Arabic script. For interpreting from and to Uzbek this is not a problem, the difficulty comes with the written translations.