Norwegian Translation Services

As the official language of Norway, Norwegian is a relatively “young” language – it dates back only to the 19^th century. Prior to that time, Danish was the national language; Norwegian arose in response to Norwegian nationalism and literary development in the 1800s. Today, written Norwegian actually has two standards recognized by the Norwegian government: Bokmål, the literary book language, which is 98% identical to Danish; and Nynorsk, the new Norwegian. Oral Norwegian, meanwhile, has no spoken standard, but is really a loose conglomeration of regional dialects.

With its North Germanic heritage, Norwegian has many words that native English speakers will quickly recognize – a quick stroll through the grocery store will put your language stress at ease, especially if your shopping list includes eggs, kake, melk, pasta or poteters. In fact, one study showed that Norwegian is the easiest foreign language for native English speakers to learn. At the same time, Norwegian uses many seeming compound words that don’t necessarily mean what their individual parts suggest. It also has many words with a depth of meaning that make translation into Norwegian – whether English-to-Norwegian translations or translations from other languages – quite challenging.