English is read comfortably across Norway, which leads some companies to conclude that Norwegian is optional. It is not optional in the places where money changes hands. Prices, delivery terms, returns policies and warranty wording are read in the reader’s own language or they are not read at all.
What is translated
- Website copy
- Home, service and category pages, navigation, buttons, form labels, validation messages and confirmation screens. The short text is where machine output is most obvious and it is translated with the rest.
- Product listings
- Titles, descriptions, specifications and variant names, with sizes and units converted to Norwegian convention rather than left in the source measurement.
- Commercial terms
- Terms of sale, delivery and returns information, warranty terms, and the complaints procedure.
- Correspondence
- Order confirmations, dispatch notices, delay notifications and the standard replies your staff send to customer enquiries.
- Regulated wording
- Price marking and discount wording where the Norwegian rules on price marketing apply, translated to the form the regulator expects rather than word for word.
Bokmål and Nynorsk
Norwegian has two written standards and both are official. Bokmål is used by the large majority of the population and is the standard for commercial writing. Nynorsk is the local written standard in parts of western Norway and public bodies are required to use it in a set proportion of their output.
Unless the audience is a public body or a specific region, work is produced in Bokmål. Where both are required this is stated separately in the quotation, because it is closer to two pieces of work than to one.
Machine translation
Norwegian is a small language and automated output in it is weaker than in the major European languages. The errors are not subtle ones. They are the errors a Norwegian reader identifies in the first sentence.
- Compound nouns
- Norwegian joins compounds into one word where English separates them. Splitting them changes the meaning and is the most recognisable mark of text that has not been written by a Norwegian.
- Register
- Norwegian commercial writing is direct and informal by the standards of most European languages. Automated output tends toward a formality that reads as stiff, or toward forms of address no longer in ordinary use.
- Definite forms
- Definiteness is carried by the ending of the noun rather than by a separate article. It is applied inconsistently by machine and the result reads as broken rather than as foreign.
- Convention
- Decimal commas, thousand separators, date order, address layout and unit conventions are left in the source form, which signals the origin of the text as clearly as the words do.
The consequence is commercial rather than aesthetic. A page in poor Norwegian performs worse than the same page left in English, because the reader can see it is a foreign company presenting itself as a local one. English is understood. Bad Norwegian is recognised.
Method
- 01
Assessment
The text is reviewed and a word count taken from the source rather than estimated. Repeated content is counted once.
- 02
Glossary
Product names, technical terms, and anything that is to remain untranslated are agreed in writing before work begins, so the same term is not rendered two ways in two places.
- 03
Translation
Carried out against the page rather than from a spreadsheet of strings, so that length, line breaks and the space a button occupies are accounted for as the text is written.
- 04
Conversion
Prices in kroner with Norwegian separators, dates in the Norwegian order, addresses in Norwegian format, and units converted. Applied throughout rather than to the body text alone.
- 05
Review
A pass over the live pages after implementation, which is where truncation, overflow and untranslated fragments are found.
Scope
Appropriate where
- A site or shop is being opened to Norwegian customers and the commercial pages need to be in Norwegian.
- English copy is in place, receiving Norwegian traffic, and converting poorly.
- Product listings have been translated by software and read badly.
- Terms, delivery and returns information are required in Norwegian.
Not appropriate where
- A certified or sworn translation is required. That must be produced by a state-authorised translator and we are not one.
- The documents are for court proceedings or for registration with a public body.
- Spoken interpretation is required.
- The work is out of Norwegian into another language rather than into Norwegian.
Cost
Quoted per word for body content and per item for short interface text, taken from the actual word count rather than an estimate. Repeated content is counted once. Product listings that share a structure are quoted per listing, as the work per listing falls sharply after the first few.
The figure is fixed before work begins. Where the source text requires editing before it can be translated, which is common where the English was itself translated from something else, that is quoted separately and may be declined.
Where the site is also being built by us under website design and management, translation is quoted within the build rather than as a separate engagement.
What Norwegian buyers expect of a site beyond its language is set out in selling into Norway from abroad. Getting the translated pages found in Norwegian search is covered by Norwegian SEO and digital PR. The remaining services are listed on the services page.
Making an enquiry
The address of the pages to be translated, or the text itself, and whether product listings are included. A word count and a fixed price are issued in response.