Finnish Language Translation

World class Finnish language translation from qualified professional linguists

• There are 5.4 million Finnish native speakers in the world.
• Finnish is… an official language in Finland; an official language of the EU; a recognised minority language in Sweden, Russia and Norway.
• Around 1 million of the global total of native speakers live in Sweden, Russia and Norway.

As a member of the Uralic family of languages, Finnish is very closely related to Estonian and more loosely related to Hungarian.

For 700 years, until 1809, the territory of Finland was under Swedish rule. Swedish was the official language of government and public life, with the first Finnish writing appearing during the 16th century. The birth of Finnish literature is usually credited to Mikael Agricola, a theologian who studied under Martin Luther; Agricola published a Finnish translation of the Old Testament in 1548.

Finnish nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th century was tied up with the struggle for recognition of the Finnish language and it wasn’t until 1892 that Finnish was given status as an official language of Finland, alongside Swedish. Today, both Finnish and Swedish are compulsory in schools in Finland and all university graduates must complete a test, demonstrating their proficiency in both languages.

Finnish has no articles or grammatical gender; there is no word for ‘please’ and no future tense. There are, however, 15 cases and some exceedingly long words. Interestingly, the 5.5% of the population who are Swedish speakers are not Swedes who live in Finland, but rather Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish. The Finland-Swedes, as they are known, have certainly punched above their weight culturally. Finland’s best-known composer, Jean Sibelius, was a Swedish speaker; The Moomintrolls, Finland’s biggest export, were written in Swedish by Finland-Swede author and artist Tove Jansson.