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.