Waffling about the weather
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NORDIC TRANSLATION SPECIALISTS
Finnish translation services
Finnish is spoken by approximately 5 million people, most of them living in Finland. Through our dedicated Finnish translation services, we help companies do business in Finland as well as connect and engage with Finnish consumers.
Entering the Finnish market
Finland is the most northern country in the European Union. Finland is an open, knowledge-based economy, with exports accounting for almost a third of GDP and one of the strongest patent systems in the EU. Politically and geographically, Finland is part of the Nordic region but not Scandinavia. Likewise, Finnish isn’t a North Germanic language but belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family of languages. Aside from the linguistic and cultural influences, Finland is a strong stable economy with high purchasing power which makes it a deeply attractive export market for businesses worldwide.
Key market entry considerations when launching new products or services in Finland
Finland routinely ranks at the very top of international surveys on education, quality of life, competitiveness, and transparency. It’s the only Nordic country that uses the EURO.
By their ethnic background, the population is very homogeneous, but around 8% speak a mother tongue other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami. When selling products in Finland, mandatory information must be provided in both of Finland’s official languages: Finnish and Swedish.
Finland ranked number 1 in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development report 2021. Business and the policy environment are supportive of sustainable investments, making Finland an excellent market for sustainable goods and solutions.
Finland primarily imports foodstuffs, petroleum, chemicals, transport equipment, iron and steel, machinery, computers and other electronic products, textiles, fabrics and grains. The EU makes up almost 65% of Finland’s total trade.
Cultural Values
An essential piece of connecting with new potential customers is learning what makes them tick, as this can help you communicate more effectively with them and win them over. That’s why our Finnish translation services are underpinned by an in-depth understanding of integral Finnish cultural values, including:
- Equality and fairness
- Environmentalism and sustainability
- Open and direct communication
- Modesty and humility
Our Finnish translation experience
Our native Finnish in-country linguists have decades of combined experience in a wide range of different domains, especially automotive, transport and engineering.
Your specialists in Finnish translation
- Dedicated linguists based in the UK and Finland
- Extensive trusted freelancer resources
- In-country cultural proficiency
- Translation from English, French, German and Swedish into Finnish
- Translation from Finnish into English
- Your own team of dedicated linguists available through our Account Linguist™ service
8m
words translated into Finnish per year
2
teams of dedicated in-house Finnish linguists
Finnish expertise in all sorts of domains
Financial services
Healthcare
Marketing
Technology & software
Legal
Manufacturing
Travel & hospitality
eCommerce
About Finnish
Finnish (suomi or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other one being Swedish) and an official minority language in Sweden. Finnish is a member of the Baltic-Finnic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of languages, which in turn is a member of the Uralic family of languages. The Baltic-Finnic subgroup also includes Estonian and other minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea.
The word count in any Finnish text will be significantly lower than in the corresponding English text. The reason for this is that the Finnish language has fifteen grammatical cases as well as an elaborate system of possessive suffixes, infinitives, particles and enclitic particles. These allow for sophisticated ideas to be expressed in the form of a few long, morphologically complex words.
This is also why the same word will appear in many different forms in a Finnish text – all nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals are inflected in 15 cases. Finnish has no prepositions or articles.
The Finnish alphabet has 29 letters, including three that do not feature in the English alphabet: å, ä and ö.
Our Finnish translation services
Translation
Finnish translation is the core of our offering. We can work in any translation environment or file format.
Machine translation post-editing
We can bring machine-translated content up to either usable or human translator level.
Revision
We can revise our own translation in-house, or you can ask for a revision of a third-party translation.
Terminology management
Allow us to maintain your Finnish terminology resources or create them from scratch.
Copy adaptation
We rework your copy in collaboration with you so it really hits home with your target geo.
Transcreation
We offer Finnish transcreation (creative translation) for when a simple translation just won’t do.
Multilingual SEO
When a website needs greater visibility in search results, we help by localising the target keywords and optimising the digital content.
Market-specific copywriting
Country-specific content that aligns perfectly with local customs, celebrations or cultural events.
Tone of voice
When it comes to multilingual communication, tone of voice can be one of the hardest things to get right. Our Finnish linguists adapt a text’s tone to match the expectations of a Finnish audience, understanding cultural nuances and keeping up with contemporary changes in the language. Finns prefer honesty when it comes to marketing and an exaggerated advertisement for a product will likely fall flat. This is the knowledge that makes Sandberg’s Finnish translation services some of the best on the market.
ISO-certified Finnish translations
Sandberg was the first company in the UK to achieve both ISO 17100 and ISO 18587 certification. Whether the translation is done by our in-house experts or one of our carefully sourced freelancers, you can be confident that a translation produced by Sandberg will hit the mark.
Finnish Style guide
Sandberg has its own comprehensive style guide for Finnish to which all our translators adhere in their work, unless a client-specific or project-specific style guide takes precedence.
Need a quote for Finnish translation?
Find out more about how we can we work with you on your next Finnish project.
Read more about Finnish
Explore more on the Finnish language on our blog.
Looking in on Finland
A brief visit to my native Finland last week included a day at #KIELI2018, the annual conference of Finnish Lang
5 facts about the Finnish language
The Finnish language has a reputation for being, shall we say, challenging for foreigners to learn (some would c
