German to Swedish Translation

This direction is used when a German document has to be submitted in Sweden. The typical applicant has completed a stage of education or a career step in Germany, Austria or Switzerland and is moving to Sweden, usually for a job, a research post or family reunification in Scandinavia. Source and target run the opposite way to the sv|de pair: here German administrative concepts are carried into a form that Swedish institutions will read, and approval is subject to the Swedish regime.

Concrete examples make the direction clearer: the person applying for a master’s programme or professional recognition in Sweden with a German diploma, the employee putting a German employer’s document before the Swedish labour market, the person who worked in Germany for many years and is transferring pension entitlements to Sweden, and the family presenting German civil registry records to the Swedish Migrationsverket. What they have in common is that the document carries a German reality that the Swedish authority does not recognise of its own accord.

Technical issues specific to German into Swedish

German’s long compound nouns are usually rendered by shorter counterparts in Swedish; terms such as Aufenthaltstitel or Handelsregisterauszug are carried over by unpacking them, because an exactly matching name does not always exist within the Swedish institutional structure. On the name side, the German letter ß is matched to a double ss and umlauts to the machine-readable spelling in the person’s passport (ä→ae); the same form is used across every document in the file.

Company forms are not translated word for word: GmbH does not automatically become the Swedish AB, because the liability structures of the two legal systems are not the same; the original abbreviation is kept and an explanation added. Swedish institutions match a person by means of a personnummer; when the date of birth and identity details in the German document are transferred into that field, the date is converted to ISO order (year-month-day).

The noun-phrase-based structure of German official style, with the verb pushed to the end, is unravelled as it is carried into Swedish and rebuilt according to Swedish’s flatter sentence order. The German grading scale (1–6) is not converted to the Swedish scale; it is explained, and the assessment is made by the Swedish authority. The official seal and date of entry on the document are preserved with their position in the translation.

Numbers and units of measurement are not converted; if an amount is in euros it is left as such, and only the Swedish convention for the decimal and thousands separators is applied. In the address field the German ordering is rearranged to follow Swedish postal conventions, but the content is not altered.

Which documents call for this direction

• German or Austrian diploma, Abschlusszeugnis and transcript
• Residence, registration and criminal record (Führungszeugnis) documents
• Trade registry extracts and signature documents
• Pension and social security employment records
• Birth, marriage and divorce records

Education files form the backbone of demand; a recognition assessment calls for a detailed breakdown of courses and credits, and a summarised translation puts the process into deadlock. In family reunification files the birth, marriage and divorce records are expected to be translated from a single source, with consistent spelling of names.

In pension files, transferring the periods worked and the employer names exactly has a direct bearing on the accuracy of the calculation in Sweden; date ranges are given particular attention. In commercial files, registry numbers are not translated but given with a reference to the record.

For applicants moving to Scandinavia the file usually consists of several documents, and these are expected to come from a single hand: different translators spelling the same person differently, or naming the same German institution differently, can on its own be grounds for refusal as far as the Swedish authority is concerned. Diplomas, civil registry documents and employment records are therefore translated with a single set of terms and name forms. The abbreviations used by German institutions (i.V., gem., for example) are not carried into the Swedish text as they stand; they are unpacked and, where necessary, given in their original form in brackets, since otherwise they carry no meaning for the official on the Swedish side. The same principle applies to registry, registration and file numbers: the number is not translated, only the record it belongs to is stated, so that the relationship between two numbers on two documents can be established.

The chain of approval

Sweden relies on the system of the auktoriserad translator (authorised translator), whose authorisation is granted by Kammarkollegiet; official applications normally look for a translation carrying that authorisation, and Migrationsverket and the universities assess documents accordingly. The document coming from Germany is expected to carry an apostille.

To see these expectations and Sweden’s approval regime in advance, look at the target country page and the requirements for the document type. Telling us the target institution before you send the document clarifies the level of approval.

Upload your document to obtain the page count and the delivery date straight away, and review current unit prices.

The information below is a guide; for this language pair the level of approval is determined by the target institution. Confirming the current requirement before applying saves time.