Swedish

Swedish translation services

Classification

Indo-European > Germanic

Script

Roman

Text direction

Left-to-right

Speakers

10 million

Other names

Official language

Sweden, Finland

Interesting Fact

In Sweden, foreign languages are a compulsory subject. Students learn English from primary school, and many study another language in secondary school.

Profile

Swedish is spoken in Sweden and parts of Finland with a total number of native speakers estimated at around 9 million.  In Finland it holds equal legal status with Finnish.  It is part of the North Germanic language group and very close to Danish and Norwegian – the three are mutually intelligible to a large degree.

The closest most of us come to speaking Swedish is clearly our long pilgrimage of sacrifice to Ikea.  Apparently there is actually a loose naming system for Ikea’s products – the founder of Ikea was dyslexic and wanted to name things in a way that was easy to remember – hence many products are named after places in Nordic countries.  Even the name of the company is loosely based on locations: Ingvar Kamprad (the founders name) Elmtaryd (the farm where he grew up), Agunnaryd (the town where he grew up).

Interestingly the creator of the hit game “Minecraft” is Swedish and the name of the company behind it (Mojang) means “gadget” in Swedish.

Language Length 
About 10% shorter than English.

Notable Grammar and Differences
CapitalisationSwedish does not capitalise days, months, languages or nationalities

Quotation marks:  Normally straight quotes (” “)

Numbers: The comma is used where English would use the decimal point and vice versa, e.g. 5.5 (English) = 5,5 (Swedish).. but 5,000 (English) is 5.000 (Swedish).

False Friends

  • Bra

    Good

  • Dragon

    Tarragon

  • Bad

    Bath

  • Dog

    Past tense of “Die” (i.e. dead)

  • Glass

    Ice cream

  • Barn

    Children (interestingly, people in Scotland and the North East of England often use the expression “Bairns” to mean children. The English and Swedish share the same Norse root here.)

  • Hamstring

    Hoarding

  • Gift

    Poison. Or “married”

Services offered for this language

Translation / Transcreation / Subtitling / Localization / Adaptation / Copywriting / Authoring / Proofreading / Revision / Editing / Translation quality assurance / Terminology / Linguistic validation / Glossary creation / Dubbing / Voice-overs / Transcription / Typesetting / Simultaneous interpreting / Consecutive interpreting / Conference interpreting / Telephone interpreting / Public service interpreting / Interpreting equipment hire / Foreign language consulting

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