Translation Tools for Swedish Research

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Translation can be a tricky business, and there will always be some who don't like the translation of some of the words. Also, sometimes a word has literal translation that doesn't match the context of how the word was used. Swedish has a fewer number of words than English, and they combine words a lot to create meaning. Also, some words are used multiple ways. Translation is usually easier and more accurate when multiple people work on it together. You might want to try FamilySearch Forums for Sweden or another community tool.

If you want to work on translating Swedish words, you can try online translation tools. There are some online tools to help with the translation of Swedish. Here are some good ones with brief instructions:

Google Language Tools
Using the Google translator is now easier than ever (July 2011).

1. Go to the page in Swedish that you want to translate.

2. Once on the page, move your mouse pointer the text area and do a "right click" on the mouse.

3. Click on "Translate to English"

Babel Fish
The Babel fish translation tool does not translate Swedish.

Dictionaries
For some historical and modern dictionaries see the article: Sweden: Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Tips
Keep in mind the technology behind the translation tools has become a lot better in recent years, but there are some challenges that the translation tools cannot handle very well. The challenges might be due to:


 * The literal translation of a word does not always match the correct meaning. There are many words in Swedish that could have multiple meanings depending on the context of the subject.


 * Some words look different from each other (in spelling) but are very close to each other phonetically.


 * There are fewer words in the Swedish language than in the English language.


 * It is common to have Swedish words combined to what looks like one word.