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 Vietnamese or  Vietnamese to English Translation?

only native speakers to ensure quality and precision translations for your target audience. With Vietnamese in particular, a deep understanding of Vietnamese culture, as well as the language, is needed for translation to be successful. When doing business in Vietnamese, 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 Vietnamese to English and English to Vietnamese 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. 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 Vietnamese translation and localization needs.

Need to get the “gist” of Vietnamese?

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

Vietnamese belongs to the Mon-Khmer branch of within the Austro-Asiatic family of language. Austro-Asiatic is a large group of related language found within the region of Southeast Asia and India. Members include the various languages of Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Southern China.

Generally, Vietnamese is divided into 3 major dialects: Northern (Hanoi), Central and Southern (Saigon). The dialects are generally mutually intelligible, and the differences are often compared to those of English between the mid-western USA and British English. Some residents from remote regions may have trouble understanding residents of other remote dialects, but situations in which they meet are rare. Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language—the meaning of each word depends on the tone (pitch and glottalization) used when pronouncing. There are 6 distinct tones per vowel, and 72 possible combinations of tones.

Possible Vowel/Tone combinations

Even the slightest variation of pitch when pronouncing a word, can alter its meaning. It’s no wonder that speakers of non-tonal languages (European languages especially) have trouble learning Vietnamese.

Below is an example of the use of tone markings and the effect on the meaning of a word:

Another similarity with Chinese, is that Vietnamese is a monosyballic language, meaning that each word is one syllable. Unlike Chinese, however, one can easily determine the pronunciation based on the written script.

History of the Vietnamese Language

by China for most of it’s history, it’s no surprise that much of its terminology and its early writing systems were based on Chinese. It has been estimated that nearly 60% of modern Vietnamese vocabulary stems from Chinese influence.

As a colony of France from 1884 until 1946, French was taught officially in Vietnam. There are many elderly Vietnamese that still retain French as a second language. Ever since communist influence, the Russian language was taught in schools and used semi-officially throughout the country. English and other western languages were almost banned as they were thought to be anti-communist. Many middle-aged Vietnamese speak Russian as a second language. As Vietnam opened up to the west, US and European pop-culture flooded the country. Vietnamese youth has easily accepted English and often use English terminology, product names and exclamations.

Written Language

Beginning in the 13th century the Chu nom system was used to write Vietnamese. A form of modified Chinese characters, each one representing one word, was used for over a millennium. In the early 16th century Portuguese Catholic missionaries began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the language for teachings and record keeping. Modern Vietnamese writing came about a century later when French Jesuit Alexandre Rhodescompiled a Vietnamese-Portguguese-Latin dictionary based on his spelling system. Although Chu Nom was still widely used well into the early 20th century, the French Colonial government made Rhode’s script official and discouraged the use of the old script in 1910. Rhode’s Writing system is known today as:    (National Language).

The Vietnamese alphabet:

The current Vietnamese alphabet has 37 letters, and can easily be identified by the number of diacritics used. Having both tonal variations and vowel sounds unique to Latin languages, diacritics are applied to vowels to illustrate the variations. Words, like with Latin languages, are written with spaces in between, and sentences use the same punctuation.

Vietnamese Language Statistics

• Chu nom scholars still exist today generally to study Vietnam’s rich literal history – generally recorded during periods of great Chinese influence.
• Vietnamese poems and songs rhyme phonetically, but usually not tonally.
• Modern Vietnamese language is the only major language in Indochina to officially use a Roman script.

Translation and Localization Issues with Vietnamese

Advanced Language Translation Inc. has extensive experience with the in and outs of the Vietnamese Language and we have a long and flawless record of success with complicated Vietnamese translation projects. Here are some of the common issues with English to Vietnamese translation and desktop publishing that we have learned:

• Not all applications and fonts support Vietnamese text and great care must be taken when using Vietnamese in complex layouts.
• The greatest trouble with typesetting Vietnamese is that there are so many loose standards for compatibility. Advanced Language Translation recommends the Unicode standard.
• There is no hyphenation in Vietnamese, because each word is its own syllable.
• Dialect may play an important role when doing voice-over work. Its best to use a voice actor with either a dialect from the target region, or one with a more Northern dialect.
• Because of the tonal qualities of Vietnamese, when doing voice-over work, be sure to record at a quality sufficient enough to capture the subtle changes in tone.

Vietnamese Language Vital Information

Speaking Population: 68 Million
Where Spoken: Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China, Indonesia, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, UK
Writing Systems: Rhodes Script (), based on the Latin alphabet.
Unicode Supported: Yes (through standard European and extended character sets)
Common Phrases:
Hello:
Goodbye: 
Please:  
Thank You:  
You’re welcome:  
My Name is…:
Yes:
No: