Portuguese Language Translation

World class Portuguese language translation from qualified professional linguists

• Number of Portuguese native speakers globally: 220 million
• Number of countries where Portuguese is an official language: 8
• Approx. percentage of world trade conducted in Portuguese: 3.1%

A Romance language derived from Latin, Portuguese is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe (a small oil-rich island off the coast of Africa). Using Latin script and being a member of the Indo-European language family, the language evolved from Galician-Portuguese during the 12th and 14th centuries, becoming known as Old-Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries. By the mid-16th century, Modern Portuguese had begun to develop.

Due to Portugal’s colonial past, Portuguese occupies second place after Spanish as the most commonly-spoken language in Latin America. Brazil is the 6th most populous country in the world and a key trade partner for the EU. The differences between the Portuguese spoken in Portugal and that of Brazil are quite pronounced, affecting spelling, verb tenses and terminology; they are similar in scope to those between American and British English. The purpose of the 2009 Portuguese spelling reform was to try and establish a uniform written version of Portuguese around the world, though implementation has so far proved patchy.

We offer professional Portuguese to English and English to Portuguese translations, as well as other language combinations including Portuguese, in a variety of subject areas.

A tip to bear in mind is to allow flexibility in the layout of your documents. When translating from Portuguese into English, the text will typically contract by about 10-15% depending on the subject matter. In the other direction (English to Portuguese), expect to see an expansion rate of 10-15%. The target market or country should be taken into account when choosing which variant (European or Brazilian) is most suitable for your Portuguese translation project.