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 Finnish or Finnish to English Translation?

Advanced Language Translation’s Professional Finnish translation services utilize only native speakers to ensure quality and precision translations for your target audience. With Finnish in particular, a deep understanding of Finnish culture is needed for translation to be successful. When doing business in a Finnish-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 Finnish to English and English to Finnish 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 Finnish-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 Finnish translation and localization needs.

Need to get the “gist” of Finnish?

Although professional translation is highly recommended for any business, legal or sincere correspondence in Finnish, 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 Finnish Language

Finnish counts approximately 6 million native speakers, approximately 5 million of which are located in Finland, where it is an official language. It is also an officially recognized language of Sweden and Norway. Other notable pockets of Finnish-speakers are found in Canada, Estonia, Russia and the USA.

History of the Finnish Language

The Finnish language belongs to the Finno-Ugric of the Uralic language family. More specifically, Finnish belongs to the Balto-Fennic subgroup, which includes many languages spoken around the Baltic Sea.

Modern day Finnish began as a collection of related and highly similar dialects referred to as proto-Finnic. The annexation of Finland by Sweden in 1323, relegated Finnish to the confines of daily conversations, since Swedish was the language of administration, Middle Low German was used for commerce and Latin found in the church. It was not until the 16th century, that Finnish bishop Mikael Agricola created the first comprehensive writing system, based heavily on Swedish, German and Latin, giving preference to the western dialects. Russia conquered Finland in the 1808-09 war with Sweden, and the rise of the Finnish language coincided with the Finnish national movement during the Russian reign. Notable is the Language Decree issued in 1863 by Alexander II, which began the process through which Finnish became an official administrative language. Nevertheless, Swedish retained its dominance in administrative affairs until the 20th century.

Written Language

Finnish utilizes the Latin alphabet. But unlike English, there are 29 letters (Ââ, Ää, Öö). While the Finnish alphabet includes all the typical letters of the English alphabet, many are used exclusively in loan words and foreign proper names.

Finnish Language Statistics

• Approximately 6 million people speak Finnish.
• There are two main varieties of Finnish: Yleiskieli and Puhekieli.
• It is estimated that 100% of the total population is literate.
• There is a high frequency of similar and identical words in Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish, which allows someone with knowledge of one to comprehend the other two.

Translation / Localization Issues with Finnish

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

• Texts may expand by about 10% when translated from English into Finnish. 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.
• Finnish is a Latin 1 language and typesetting of Dutch texts does not pose any major technical difficulties since most current applications can accept Finnish text directly, but hyphenation can be an issue.
• There are two main varieties of Finnish. Yleiskieli is formal (with kirjakieli as its written form) and Puhekieli is informal. The differences between Yleiskieli and Puhekieli can be significant.
• Finnish is standardized throughout the country. However, there are two distinct dialects that exist (Western and Eastern). Because there are only slight variations between the two, they could more accurately be described as two different accents. Nevertheless, for projects requiring audio spoken in Finnish, be sure to choose voiceover talent that uses the preferred accent of your target audience.
• As with any other language, having taken a couple years of Finnish or being able to speak Finnish, does not necessarily make one a translator. Translation requires more skills than just good command of source and target languages.

Finnish Language Vital Information

Speaking Population: About 6 Million;
Where Spoken: Finland, Canada, Estonia, Russia 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)
Finnish: suomi (SOH-may-a)
Hello: terve (TER-veh)
Good-bye: näkemiin (NA-keh-mee)
Thank you: kiitos (KEY-tos)
Yes: kyllä (KUHL-la)
No: ei (aay)
English: englantia (en-LAN-tia)