An Accent on Accuracy

The highest quality translations, brisk turnaround schedules, competitive rates, and sharing of our knowledge, are all requisites for ALT‘s success. The complete and accurate translation of your company’s communications is vital to your success. That’s why ALT is obsessed with providing the best translators for YOUR project. High-quality translations are the product of a highly talented and experienced translation team with expertise in your industry. ALT puts all the pieces together to make it happen.

Why choose us for English to Danish or Danish to English Translation?

Advanced Language Translation’s Professional Danish translation services utilize only native speakers to ensure quality and precision translations for your target audience. With Danish in particular, a deep understanding of Danish culture is needed for translation to be successful. When doing business in a Danish-speaking country, professional human translation is a must. Do not expect to close a business deal or impress your clients with spotty software translation. Only through human translation, edited and customized to your target audience, can your meaning be honestly conveyed and your audience not be offended.

We are proud of our excellent reputation for reliable and high quality Danish to English and English to Danish translation services. We have assembled teams of translators from around the world, with an array of skills and specialties and can custom fit the knowledge and strengths of our teams to your specific projects and to your specific Danish-speaking market. To demonstrate our commitment to quality and our dedication to our clients, we offer free consultations and provide an industry leading 180-day warranty on translation!

We provide quick and easy custom quotes for your Danish translation and localization needs.

Need to get the “gist” of Danish?

Although professional translation is highly recommended for any business, legal or sincere correspondence in Danish, sometimes it may be ok to use machine translation (via software or the internet) to get the gist of an e-mail or web page. By no means is machine translation an acceptable substitute for professional translation—the technology is not there yet. But it is great for quickly getting the general idea of an article, e-mail, or web site.

Interesting Facts about the Danish Language

Danish counts approximately 6 million native speakers, of which 5 million are located in Denmark, where it is the official language. The remaining 1 million speakers are found in the former Danish colonies of Greenland and the Faroe islands – where Danish enjoys official status – and are also scattered amongst the countries of Canada, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.

History of the Danish Language

The Danish language belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo– European language family. More specifically, Danish is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a family, which also includes Icelandic, Faroese, Norn, Norwegian and Swedish.

Modern day Danish began as a mere dialect of a common Scandinavian language called Proto Norse that was spoken from 200 AD to 1200 AD. During the subsequent years until 1500 AD, Proto Norse was exposed to great external influences, first Low German, and, after the Reformation, High German. Proto-Norse was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, which utilized 24 runes. Proto-Norse slowly evolved into Old Norse, which, making use of 8 fewer runes, was quite distinct from its predecessor. After the 8th century, two similar but distinctly different forms of Old Norse became to appear: Old West Norse and Old East Norse. Old East Norse would give rise to a runic form of Swedish/Danish, itself diverging until the dialect of Denmark was distinct from that of Sweden.

Written Language

Danish utilizes the Latin alphabet. But unlike English, there are 29 letters (Ææ, Øø, Åå are the ‘extra’ letters and appear at the end of the alphabet). While the Danish alphabet includes the letters q, w, x, and z, these are used almost exclusively in loanwords and foreign names.

The Danish language is officially regulated by the Dansk Sprognævn, or the “Danish Language Committee” which was established in 1955 under the Danish Ministry of Culture. The committee seeks to follow the development of the language, answer inquiries about the language and its use, and most importantly, to update the official Danish dictionary, Retskrivningsordbogen.

Danish Language Statistics

• Approximately 6 million people speak Danish.
• There are 3 major dialects: Eastern Danish (Østdansk or Kobenhavnsk), Island Danish (Odansk), Jutlandish (Jysk).
• It is estimated that 99% of the total population is literate.
• There is a high frequency of similar and identical words in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, which allows someone with knowledge of one to comprehend the other two.

Translation / Localization Issues with Danish

Advanced Language Translation Inc has extensive experience with commercial and technical translations from English to Danish and from Danish into English. We have also amassed years of experience in typesetting Danish content. Here are some of the common issues with English to Danish translation that we have learned:

• Texts may expand by about 10% when translated from English into Danish. It is extremely important to take this into account in the document authoring stage. For example, buttons on a web site should allow for this expansion.
• Danish is a Latin 1 language and typesetting of Dutch texts does not pose any major technical difficulties since most current applications can accept Danish text directly, but hyphenation can be an issue.
• Danish is standardized throughout the country. However, differences in accents across regions may be significant. Therefore, for projects requiring audio spoken in Danish, be sure to choose voiceover talent that uses the preferred dialect of your target audience. The Rigsdansk dialect of greater Copenhagen is predominant.
• As with any other language, having taken a couple years of Danish or being able to speak Danish, does not necessarily make one a translator. Translation requires more skills than just good command of source and target languages.

Danish Language Vital Information

Speaking Population: About 6 Million;
Where Spoken: Denmark, Canada, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.
Writing Systems: Latin 1
Code Pages:
ANSI - 1252
Mac - 10000
Windows – Western European
Unicode Supported: Yes
Common Phrases: (phonetic pronunciations in parentheses)
Danish:dansk (dahn-sk)
Hello: hej (hi)
Good-bye: farvel (fah-vil); hej hej (hi-hi)
Please: Tak (tahk)
Yes: ja (yeah)
No: nej (nai)
English: engelsk (ENG-esk)