Scandinavian Languages Translation Case Studies

The languages spoken in Scandinavia are North Germanic languages, and include Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese. They are often referred to as Scandinavian languages, after the geographical area. Finnish is sometimes included in the list of Scandinavian languages although it is completely unrelated to the other languages in the region.

The site we localised into Norwegian, Danish and Finnish. 

Swedish Danish Finnish website translation (Click to enlarge)

Danish Translation and Typesetting

Danish is a North Germanic language related to Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, and Swedish.

The example below is just one of a series of children’s puzzle books from English into Danish involving translation, typesetting and proofreading . A difficult project to make the Danish translation actually work with some of the images and fit the puzzles.

Danish translation and typesetting of children’s puzzle book (Click to enlarge)

Norwegian Translation and Typesetting

Related to Icelandic and Faroese, Norwegian is also from the northern Germanic branch of the Indo-European family tree.

The example below is part of a project for a series of product information leaflets commissioned by the companies design agency who were producing the English versions.

Norwegian translation and typesetting sample by adelphi (Click to enlarge)

Swedish Translation and Typesetting

Swedish is very close to Danish and Norwegian. There are at least 9 million speakers of Swedish.

The Equi-Trek website has already been translated by Adelphi Translations into French Italian and German. Now they are rolling out (literally) their horse box products into the Scandinavian market.

Swedish website for Equi-trek (Click to enlarge)

Finnish Translation and Typesetting

Finnish Typesetting and Translation (Click to enlarge)

The official language of Finland, Finnish uses the Latin alphabet and the letters ä, ö.

Finnish is a unique language, unrelated to any other living tongue. When typesetting European languages we, here at Adelphi, are always banging on about the text expanding in comparison to English.

As an example we can present the ‘longest word in the Finnish language’, which happens to be ‘lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas’.

At 61 characters long, this would cause a nightmare were it be included in a translated and typeset document. It can be translated as: Someone who is an aeroplane jet turbine motor assistant mechanic, non-commissioned officer, in training. If you want to amuse and astound your friends at parties I have broken up the word so that you can have a stab at pronouncing it. ‘len-to-ko-ne-suih-ku-tur-bii-ni-moot-to-ria-pume-kaa-nik-koa-liup-see-riop-pil-as’. The word epäjärjestelmällisyydestäänköhän came a distant second with 32 letters.

Adelphi Translations is a full service translation agency producing translations, typesetting, multilingual and foreign language websites, voice overs, Flash files and subtitles in any language.

Website Translation — YouTube video with Captions

Translating, Typesetting and Voice-overs for the €˜Community Languages’ of the UK

Adelphi Translations have many years experience in handling the €˜Community Languages’ of the United Kingdom for translation, typesetting or voice-over projects. But what exactly are the €˜Community Languages’ of the UK? The definition given by CILT (The National Centre for Languages) is “languages spoken by members of minority groups or communities within a majority language context.”

This definition covers languages such as Welsh or Gaelic, which have been spoken on the islands for hundreds of years, but nowadays they often refer to the languages spoken by either refugees or immigrants into the UK.

Scottish Refugee Council (SRC)

“Scottish Refugee Council is an independent charity dedicated to providing advice and information to people seeking asylum and refugees living in Scotland”.

Typesetting and translation examples by Adelphi Translations Ltd (Click to enlarge)

Adelphi Translations Ltd. were invited to tender for the translation, typesetting and voice over work for the Scottish Refugee Council in 2007. Our first project was a 120 page Welcome to Glasgow information book translated into Somali, French, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Mandarin, Tigrinya, Kurdish Sorani and Pashto. We flew to Glasgow for a meeting with the SRC working out the schedule and to answer any questions they might have regarding the style of translation, the fonts to use and the delivery format.

Since then Adelphi has produced voice-overs for the SRC as well as the translation of many documents in the same languages.

CILT – The National Centre for Languages

“CILT are the UK standard-setting body for languages and provide advice, intelligence and other services for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.”

Adelphi staff went to London for a meeting with the staff of CILT including writers, designers and the translators. We discussed the correct fonts to use, especially for Yoruba, and had individual talks with each translator to discuss any questions they had before starting the work.

The documents were curriculum guides and the languages involved were Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Somali, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kurdish and Yoruba.

Community Languages for CILT (the National Centre for Languages)
(Click to enlarge)

TB Alert

“TB Alert is the UK’s National and International Tuberculosis charity – the only British charity working solely on fighting TB in the UK and overseas”.

The project comprised of 9 documents translated and typeset into 19 languages. These were: Albanian, Bengali, Farsi, French, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Somali, Kurdish Sorani, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

TB Alert Italian Sample (Click to enlarge)

Each document was produced using Adobe InDesign, both the English and Middle Eastern versions, and the final deliverables were print-ready PDFs.

TB Alert Urdu Sample (Click to enlarge)

Community Language Voice overs

Adelphi translations have produced hundreds of voice-overs in community languages. Some examples include:

• Muslim Aid: Multilingual voice overs in Urdu, Bengali, Somali, Malay, French, Spanish, Turkish and Arabic.
• Housing Associations such as Bernslai Homes and South Essex Homes
  
• Asylum Teams such as: Barnsley, Rotherham, Glasgow, Sheffield and Kirklees asylum teams
  
  

How Translation Memory (TM) can Benefit your Translation Project

Over the years Adelphi Translations Ltd have invested heavily in modern Translation Memory software. We are currently the proud owners of Trados 2007 and SDL Studio 2009. Using Translation Memory Software brings two major benefits to our clients: projects can be completed more quickly and deadlines met, and costs can be reduced for repeated translations.

What is Translation Memory?

When Translation Memory (TM) software is used to translate a document the source document is processed and broken down by the software into a series of logical sections or ‘segments’. They can be whole sentences, phrases or sub-phrases. The image below shows how an English document has been segmented by the TM software.

When loading the document into the software an empty TM is created which is populated by the source English segments. When the translator enters the translation in the target language column and verifies that segment this is entered into the TM. So now the TM database hold the original English source and its associated translation.

How does TM benefit the current project?

Speed and accuracy are improved even during the translation of a document using TM software. If an exact copy of the segment appears again in the document it will be pre-translated from the TM database which both speeds up the translation process and assures consistency – identical English segments will always be translated in the same way.

How does TM benefit future projects?

When the translation is complete the TM will hold a complete translation of the source document. If you then need another document translated, which contains similar subject matter, the new document can be loaded and run against the TM which will translate any segments which have been translated before in the previous project (100% matches). If the segment is almost, but not exactly, the same as in the previous document the software will alert the translator with a “fuzzy match”. The translator will then check the translation and correct it to be accurate.

A good example of the power of TM would be a technical manual. Your product manual can be translated using TM software. If you then produce an upgrade or version of your product, in which certain features or functions are improved or changed, much of your previous manual may still be relevant. Using TM software, only the new parts of the latest manual will be charged at the full rate.

Both 100% and fuzzy matches speed up the translation process, ensure consistency between documents and will cost less as such matches are charged at a lower rate than new translations.

Save Time and Money with Translation Software

In order to save both time and money on translation projects it makes sense to partner with a translation company that understands the power of TM software and can use it to increase speed and accuracy and to lower costs. Adelphi Translations can offer you such a service as your translation partners for almost all types of document, from MS word to InDesign, from XML to HTML.