Galician translation

Galician translation and its market

Galician is a language spoken by around 3 million people, generally in and around Galicia. There are currently many Galician translation companies in Spain offering language services, such as Translinguo Global®. Rates are around €0.08 per word for non-official documents, and €0.12 for sworn translations.

Since Galician is an official language of Spain, there are sworn Galician translators appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs known as “traductores xurados”. They take care of documents belonging to public organisations that need Galician translation.

In our Galician translation company we have the best professionals specialised in branches such as the one mentioned above, among others. Translinguo Global® is committed to work faithfully to the original text without leaving any detail behind.

Influence of Galician on Castilian Spanish

The Spanish spoken in Galicia has several characteristics including the presence of ‘Galicianisms’, which is a problem that must be avoided in Galician translation. These are some of the most frequent interferences in the Galician dialect:

• Inclusion of the letters -ct- where they are not present in Spanish: “subjectivo” vs “subjetivo”;
• Using ‘b’ where ‘v’ would be used in Spanish, as in “móbil” vs “móvil”;
• Using the article in proper names: in Galician “A Lua”, but in Spanish “Lúa”;
• Omission of reflexive pronouns, as in “*corté el pelo” instead of “me corté el pelo”.

The other neighbouring language, Portuguese

We know that Galician sounds like Spanish, but the reality is that it is much closer to Portuguese historically. Until the middle of the Middle Ages Galician and Portuguese were one and the same language called Galician-Portuguese or Portuguese-Galician.

Currently, organisations that promote “reintegrationist” regulations, such as the Academia Galega da Língua Portuguesa, use an orthography similar to that of Portuguese.

In contrast, Galician is closer to Spanish than Portuguese in terms of phonetics. For example, there are no nasal vowels, no sonorant syllables such as /z/ and /ʒ/, nor distinction between the phonemes /v/ and /b/. In Galician orthography, the sounds /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ are written as “ll” and “ñ”, not “lh” or “nh”.