Request a proposal Receive a proposal within one hour!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
  1. Service & Language Selection
  2. Text Upload & Contact Details
  • Minox
  • Swepro
  • Thyssen Krupp
  • Saint Gobain
  • Dekra

English to Dutch and Dutch to English document translations of the highest quality — meeting your needs with our services. We guarantee:

  • Translators who are native speakers of the target language, whether it is English or Dutch
  • ISO 9001 and ISO 17001 quality standard compliance
  • Localization expertise in your line of work (medicine, engineering, etc.)

Fill and submit the form above to receive a proposal for translating your document within an hour!
Contact us at [email protected] for any additional inquiries.

See below, what kind of changes to the text might be expected for translations from English to Dutch or vice versa.

Translation differences

Translation from English to Dutch or vice versa entails certain changes in the resulting text. These changes are caused by the inherent differences between the languages. The following things in your order might be affected:

  • The layout of the resulting text
  • Time it takes to translate
  • Translation complexity

Among other factors, these parameters can influence the final price as well. The layout factor is especially important to those, who are interested in our DTP (Desktop Publishing) services.

Translating a document between English and Dutch — what to expect
Parameter To English To Dutch Difference
Writing systemLatin English alphabetLatin Dutch alphabetSame writing system, different scripts: minimal difference
Text directionleft-to-rightleft-to-rightSame
Characters per word (average)66None
Text length (characters)18% shorter21% longerMinimal
Overall differenceNegligible

Text length and document layout

The main factors influencing the length and layout of the translated document are:

  • Writing system of the target language
  • Writing direction
  • Word length
  • Relative lengths of the texts

Writing system

Both English and Dutch use the same writing system — the Latin alphabet. It means that usually the translated text can be displayed, using the same fonts as the source text. This lack of difference makes it easier to make the source and the target text be the same length. Please note, however, that the languages employ different sub-types (a.k.a. scripts) of the alphabet. Some fonts of the source language may not support all the signs in the target language.

Writing direction

Both languages are read left-to-right, meaning that there should be no significant changes to the layout in terms of the order of text elements.

Word length

Both languages have 6 characters per word, on average. This promises a relatively similar formatting of your documents, provided that the rest of the parameters are not too different.

Text length

On average, documents translated to English are 18% shorter than source texts in Dutch. On the other hand, Dutch texts are 21% longer than their English counterparts. It means that some formatting differences are to be expected in the translated texts, although they should not present a serious formatting issue. Please note, that the actual visual length is also influenced by the font used.

Word order

Depending on your needs, the word order might be rather important for the translation. Things like slogans and brand names may convey an entirely different meaning, if their word order is changed.

The standard word orders of the languages are different. Various sentence structures may still be possible, but they might have a different meaning or change their style. However, it must be noted, that Dutch has a free word order. This implies that translations from English to Dutch will usually allow preserving your desired sentence structure.

Dialects and varieties

English has 3 major varieties: US, UK, and Australian. It is essential for you to choose, which form or dialect to translate to. This is because each variety, from the point of view of the other types, can feel unnatural, misleading, or plainly inappropriate for the text.

If you are not sure, which form to choose for your document, the safe choice is the more widespread one, or the one understood by most speakers. For English, it is the US variety.

Translation complexity

Translation complexity is partially dependent on how closely the languages are related. The further apart the languages are, the more time and effort it takes to express an idea from one language in another one. As a consequence, it affects the price and time it takes to translate a document between English and Dutch.

Both English and Dutch belong to the Indo-European language family. Moreover, the two belong to its Germanic branch, which generally implies that it is easier to transfer the meaning of the English text to its Dutch counterpart, and vice versa.

Succesful Cooperations

Computer Science & Tech

Computer-Assisted Translation of XML Files

See references

Marketing & Sale

Localization of POS Material in Indesign

See references

Technology

Software Localization for an Online-Shop

See references

Engineering

Translation and Desktop Publishing of Technical Drawings

See references