Translate Swedish to Finnish

Finland is known as the home of Santa Claus, saunas and the much-loved black liquorice based candy called salmiakki. It is one of the northern countries in Europe, boarding Sweden to the west, Russia to the east and Norway to the north. The country’s population is about 5,5 million. The population might be small, but Finland is full of potential customers. The climate and long distances make Finnish people love shopping online.

Even though Swedish is the country’s second official language, and a lot of Finnish people understand it, you need to translate your site from Swedish to Finnish if you want to sell to Finland. The majority of its citizens are able to understand and communicate in English too, but translating your site into Finnish is still needed.

Keep reading and we will tell you why it’s still needed and why you should partner with Topcontent to translate your website from Swedish to Finnish.

Contact us for a free quote

The Online and E-Commerce market of Finland

Before we move on, let’s discuss a bit about Finland. Here are some important facts about this country of the north:

  • Capital: Helsinki
  • Official languages: Finnish, Swedish, Sámi
  • Population: 5,521,158 (July 2019 estimate)
  • Area: 338,424 km2
  • Currency: € (always used after the number, for example 100 €)
  • Date format: dd.mm.yyyy
  • GDP (PPP) per capita: $46,559 (24th position in the world)
  • Weather: four seasons with warm summers and freezing winters. The entire country is covered with snow during winter time. And winter is long.
  • Culture and interests: Finnish people are known to be enthusiastic about sports – especially winter sports. Other interests include cinema, arts, literature, traveling and international cuisines.

From the data above we can see three important factors. Finland has a high GDP per capita combined with a population spread out over vast distances and a harsh climate. Those factors make online shopping and entertainment extra attractive for the population. Finnish people spend a big portion of their earnings online. Finland is thus a very good market to enter if you are selling goods or services online.

Why you should translate Swedish to Finnish

Even if some Finnish speakers can understand Swedish, it’s very important to translate to Finnish if you want to reach the Finnish market. The main reasons are traffic and conversion.

Become visible in the local organic search

Google wants to please their users. They want to show their users what they believe they want to see. Local results in the users native language is high up on that list. If you want to be visible at all on Google.fi, the local search engine in Finland, your site needs to be in Finnish. You can see this by doing a simple test. Go to your local google page, for example Google.se, and then search for a product. Scroll down and try to find a search result in Finnish. You won’t see it because it’s not there. That’s how invisible your Swedish site is in Finland before your translate it to Finnish. If you want organic traffic from Finland, you need to translate your site to Finnish.

Get traffic from Finnish keywords

Finnish speaking internet users are more likely to use Finnish keywords when they search on Google. By translating your site from Swedish to Finnish, you are more likely to rank in search engines with Finnish searches as well. If your site is in Swedish, you won’t be visible to the millions of Finnish google users who use Finnish keywords. By translating your site from Swedish to Finnish, you will increase the amount of traffic from Finnish.

Get more natural links from Finland

Getting links are the bread and butter of SEO. If you want to rank locally you need local links. The chances of getting good quality Finnish links will increase if your site is translated from Swedish to Finnish. Finnish webmasters prefer to link to sites in Finnish. This will increase your rankings and increase the traffic to your site.

Increase conversion by increasing trust

Everyone involved in online marketing knows that getting the traffic is merely the first step. Converting the traffic into paying customers is as important. If you translate your site from Swedish to Finnish you will increase your conversion rate. Trust is very important when a potential customer is deciding if he wants to purchase or not. Selling text in Finnish will make a Finnish speaking visitor trust your site more. This means higher conversion rates on your traffic from Finland.

Get better ROI on your Finnish advertisement campaigns

Getting organic traffic from SEO efforts is not everything in online marketing. You also need good advertisement campaigns and you probably already have them. Translating your site from Swedish to Finnish will improve your conversion rates and thus your ROI (Return On Investment), on your advertisement will improve. This means that you will get more money back from your advertisement investment.

Improved Adwords Quality Score will reduce your ad cost

The Google Adwords auction system looks at your adwords quality score when determining how much you should pay to have your ad displayed. If you improve your Quality Score, you will pay less in the long term. Bounce rate is a factor in the quality score and the bounce rate will be reduced when you translate your site from Swedish to Finnish.

Only 5% of the Finnish population truly speak Swedish

We already mentioned that Swedish is the second official language of Finland – so why bother with translating your site to Finnish? Wouldn’t everyone be able to understand the Swedish version already? In theory maybe yes, but in practise, only 5% of the Finnish population speak Swedish as their native language. By translating your site you will make sure you reach the rest.

Reach a bigger market with your current organisation

Setting up a business is hard and takes a lot of effort. You need products to sell, suppliers, employees, bank accounts, software, websites, marketing material and procedures to bind them all together. It’s hard and takes a lot of time. By translating your site from Swedish to Finnish you will get a higher return on the efforts you have already made. You will reach a larger audience and market by just ordering translations from Topcontent. In other words; Sell more using what you already have.

How to translate from Swedish to Finnish

Now that you have seen all the benefits of translating your site into Finnish, let’s look at how easy it is to do it. We created a simplified and smooth process for translating from Swedish to Finnish.

Step 1: Prepare the source text

The first step of translating from Swedish to Finnish is to prepare the source file, the Swedish text. If you have the text in a separate document you just send it to us. If your text is on your website, you either need to export it or connect your website to our system using one of the different integration tools we have.

Available integration methods

We have three ways of connecting your website to our translation service.

  1. Using WPML (requires WordPress)
  2. Using Polylang and our WordPress Plugin
  3. By connecting via API

If you don’t have a WordPress based website or the necessary technical skills to connect via API, we can help you export the material. Contact us to get help connecting your site or exporting your content.

Step 2: The translators do phase one

When we have received the Swedish text, we put it into our web based translation system and our big pool of native Finnish translators start translating the text to Finnish.

Step 3: Proofreading and Quality Check

As translations are being finished, a different pool of native Finnish translators start proofreading the text. In some cases we even use a third level of translators that does an extra quality check. If they encounter mistakes they will send the work back to the translator in the first phase with feedback. This process of multiple levels of translators has proven to be the best way to ensure a higher quality of translations.

Step 4: Translated text delivered to you

When the proofreaders finish their work, the translated text is sent to you. If you are using one of our integration tools, you will receive the translations continuously as they are finished. If you sent us a file to translate, you will receive the same file format back but in Finnish instead of Swedish. You always have the opportunity to give feedback on the text if you see room for improvement.

Contact us to get started

How much does it cost to translate from Swedish to Finnish?

The price of a Swedish to Finnish translation order is calculated based on the amount of words you want to translate. This means you will be charged a fixed price per word. This is standard when translating between western languages that are using the latin character set – which both Swedish and Finnish are.

However, the final price per word can vary based on different factors, such as:

  • Difficulty of the topic
  • Amount of words (discounts for larger volumes)
  • Urgency of project

For example, you might need to pay a higher price if your request is very urgent and requires a tight deadline. If the topic is a very difficult one, the price might be higher as well. There is also a chance for a discount on larger orders (for example over 100 000 words).

Example of a translation cost from Swedish to Finnish

To clarify how much a Swedish to Finnish translation request would cost, we have set up simple examples for a small and a big translation request with an example of a cost per word. This shows how much the order would cost with a general deadline in standard quality.

Quality: Standard Quality Quality: Standard Quality
Deadline: No urgency, 1-2 weeks Deadline: No urgency, 1-2 weeks
Amount of words: 1000 Amount of words: 20 000
Price per word: 0.12 euros Price per word: 0.12 euros
Calculation: 1000 * 0.12 = 120 euros   Calculation: 20 000 * 0.12 = 2400 euros

So as you can see, the price is only determined based on the amount of words. The more text you need to translate the more you pay. The price per word though, stays the same.

How do you count words in Swedish?

All translation orders are priced based on the word count of the original Swedish source. Word count includes everything in the document or text you need to have translated:

  • Headings
  • Tables
  • Citations
  • Quotes
  • Lists etc.

We can translate HTML documents and programming code. The HTML code, or programming code, is not counted as words since we won’t translate them.

One word is considered as a set of characters, symbols or numbers, separated from each other with a space in the document. Before we send any translation project through our system to our native Finnish speaking translators, the exact word count of the document(s) is counted. You can send us a document in your preferred format, for example .doc or .xlsx. The price is calculated on the word count of the original language, in this case Swedish.

You will always know the translation cost before we start the project.

Formal differences between Swedish and Finnish

It is a common mistake to think that Swedish and Finnish resemble each other just because the countries share a border. Actually, the two languages come from different language groups which results in very different grammar rules, for example:

  • Swedish uses high amounts of prepositions / Finnish language has almost no prepositions.
  • Finnish has a high number of inflected forms, such as the cases of nouns, numerals, adjectives, and pronouns, as well as the persons and tenses of verbs.
  • In Swedish, verbs inflect for different tenses, and nouns in the language are divided into two genders. Adjectives inflect by these genders.

Why you should use a native to translate Swedish to Finnish

As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of bilingual Finnish people. There are also a lot of Swedish people living in Sweden, who know Finnish. When translating from Swedish to Finnish, it’s very important to hire a native Finnish individual. The quality of a translation is always better if the translator is first and foremost an expert in the target language. In our process, we make sure that the translations from Swedish to Finnish are done by translators that have Finnish as their native language.

Common mistakes translating from Swedish to Finnish

The most common mistake in Swedish to Finnish translations are too direct translations when it comes to word order. Swedish language has quite regulated word order, whereas in Finnish, word order is free and can be adjusted based on context. Too direct translations will never sound natural. A common mistake by non professional translators is that they keep the word order used in the Swedish original text, while a professional translator will change the word order to make the Finnish text sound more natural.

How length of text differs between Swedish and Finnish

The amount of words in the output of a Swedish to Finnish translation request might vary a lot, and usually, a ready Finnish text will have fewer words than a Swedish text with the same meaning. This is due to the fact that Swedish uses a high number of prepositions which increases the amount of words. The amount of prepositions in Finnish language is much less and this, together with longer and fewer words, will result in a shorter text.

Here is an example to demonstrate:

Swedish – 24 words Finnish – 17 words
Casinot erbjuder 1000+ olika spel och tillhandahåller dessutom Sveriges största utbud av casinospel för mobilen, vilket gör det ännu enklare att spela ditt favoritspel. Kasino tarjoaa yli 1 000 erilaista peliä ja Ruotsin suurimman valikoiman mobiilipelejä, joten suosikkipelisi löytäminen on entistä helpompaa.

The amount of characters in the examples above is almost the same – 168 vs 141, but the Swedish phrase has an average of 7 characters per word when the Finnish phrase has an average of 10.

Common terms translated from Swedish to Finnish

You have read a lot of information about translating Swedish to Finnish and learned why you should have your translation completed by a native Finnish freelance translator at Topcontent.

To get you started with your translation, we have listed here some common Swedish terms used in online businesses and their Finnish translations:

SV FI SV FI
Om oss Tietoa meistä Online casino Nettikasino
Lägg till Lisää ostoskoriin Integritetspolicy Tietosuojakäytäntö
Boka nu Varaa nyt Läs mer Lue lisää
Kampanjer Kampanjat Registrera dig Rekisteröidy
Kontakta oss Ota yhteyttä Erbjudande Ale
Kundservice Asiakaspalvelu Skaffa konto Luo tili
Free Spin Ilmaiskierros Spelautomater  Kolikkopelit
Hemsida Kotisivu Bordsspel Pöytäpeli
Endast begränsad tid! Vain rajoitetun ajan! Regler och villkor Ehdot ja säännöt
Live casino Live-kasino Säga upp Lopeta tilaus

How to calculate ROI on translations from Swedish to Finnish

The decision to translate your website from Swedish to Finnish is a business decision. You should do it when it makes financial sense. As you can see from the reasons above, translating it has many benefits and getting an ROI on translating from Swedish to Finnish is easy. If you want help to calculate the exact ROI for your particular business, our team can help you. Contact us to get help calculating ROI.

Translate your website from Swedish to Finnish with Topcontent

By translating your site from Swedish to Finnish, you can grow your business, get ahead of your competitors and create a better user experience for your visitors. You will get more traffic and your website will have a higher conversion rate. Even though Finland’s population might be small, the country has a lot of potential buyers.

When you want you translate your site to Finnish, you should choose Topcontent as your partner. We understand the business side of the translation process, the need for ROI, and we are experts at translations. With skilled native translators, a smooth working process and a transparent pricing system, you will get high-quality Swedish to Finnish translations and can start making money on the Finnish market.

Contact us to get started