Swedish Dialects and Language Translation Software
When you translate Swedish you must remember there are different Swedish
dialects. Learning more about the dialects of a language can be important
when you are working with language translation and language translation software.
Swedish is spoken by nearly 9 million people worldwide, predominantly located
in Sweden. Swedish is also spoken in parts of Finland, especially along the
coast on the Åland islands. While there are regional dialects of Swedish,
they are very similar in sound and are generally able to be understood by
all. In addition, those who speak Danish and Norwegian also can easily understand
and recognize Swedish words and language.
If your audience speaks a dialect of Swedish, they will easily be able to
understand Standard Swedish.
What is a Dialect?
A dialect means that in certain areas the speech may have some variation.
The dialect generally applies to the vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation
characteristic of specific geographic localities or social classes.
English Dialects / Compare British English to American English
To better understand dialects, it is helpful to look at English as an example.
There are many different dialects of English; however, if you know English
then you can still understand the different dialects. For example, in England
you could easily pick up a British newspaper and be able to read it, but
there will be some words which have different meanings than they do here
in the U.S. For example, the British may say the sentence, “He is moving
into his flat this weekend.” In America we would say, “He is
moving into his apartment this weekend.” In the U.K. they simply use
the word “flat” instead of “apartment” but you can
still get the idea of what it is that they are saying.
In Systran’s Software we have built in the ability to translate using
both the UK (British English) and American English dialects.
Swedish Dialects
While Swedish has some locally spoken dialects, Standard Swedish is the
national language and in order to function in society all Swedish people
read, write,and speak Standard Swedish.
What is Localization?
Localization is a term used to describe translation that is targeted to
a specific area, culture or dialect. One of the most important times
to consider localization is when a company is running an advertisement
of a product.
Systran’s Translation Software Uses Standard Swedish
Systran’s translation software uses the Standard Swedish dialect for
translation. While you can easily customize the Swedish translation to another
dialect by training the software to recognize different words for another
dialect by building your own custom dictionaries, building translation memory,
and more. For example, you can very easily create a “Finnish Dialect” dictionary.
In reality, the differences between the Swedish dialects of Sweden and Finland
with reference to pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar are relatively minor,
so if you translate with the software a person who speaks Swedish can understand
the minor differences.
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