The Persian language (Farsi) has been written with a number of different scripts, including Old Persian Cuneiform, Pahlavi, Aramaic, and Avestan. In 642 AD, Arabic became the language of government, culture and especially religion. Modern Persian appeared during the 9th century. It is written in a version of the Arabic script and is full of words of Arabic origin.

Under Mongolian and Turkish rulers, Persian was adopted as the language of government in Turkey, central Asia and India, where it was used for centuries, and until after 1900 in Kashmir.

Persian is a member of the Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. There are a number of closely-related varieties of Persian, including:

• Persian or Western Farsi is spoken by about 22 million people in central and south central Iran.
• Dari or Eastern Farsi is spoken by about 7 million people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Farsi is one of the languages regularly translated by Comms Multilingual. Farsi translation projects have included work on advertisements, brochures, manuals, newsletters and typesetting.