Denmark

What language should you translate to localize in Denmark?

If you want to read the fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen in his own words, you will have to learn Danish – a language descending from Old Norse, which was the language spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking era. Today, the people are friendlier, and often referred to as some of the happiest people in the world, but the language is still notoriously brutal to learn for foreigners. And that is before we have even started on the dialects. Despite the country’s modest size, some dialects are so different that even native Danes from different parts of the country will have a hard time understanding each other. The good thing is that this mainly goes for spoken language, and, if you choose to localize to the Danish market, written Danish is the same standard used by all.

One of the more famous untranslatable words is hygge. It is a core part of Danish culture and according to the definition in Wikipedia, it is a “word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment“. It is not a specifically Danish phenomenon, though. All cultures know how to hygge, but the Danes (and Norwegians) just have a word for it, and even though they may find it hard to describe, they all know instantly whether something is hyggeligt or not.

Danish

Hvis du vil læse H.C. Andersens eventyr med hans egne ord, skal du lære dansk – et sprog, der stammer fra oldnordisk, som var det sprog, der blev talt i Skandinavien i vikingetiden. I dag er danskerne venligere indstillet, og omtales ofte som nogle af de lykkeligste mennesker i verden, men sproget bliver stadig betragtet som et af de sværeste at lære for udlændinge. Og så er vi ikke engang begyndt at tale om dialekterne endnu. På trods af landets beskedne størrelse er nogle dialekter så forskellige, at selv indfødte danskere fra forskellige dele af landet kan have svært ved at forstå hinanden. Det gode er, at dette hovedsageligt gælder for talesprog, og hvis man vælger at lokalisere til det danske marked, følger det danske skriftsprog  den samme standard på tværs af landet.

Et af de mere berømte uoversættelige ord er hygge. Det er en central del af dansk kultur, og ifølge definitionen i Wikipedia er det et ord, der “indebærer noget rart, afslappet, trygt og genkendeligt“. Det er dog ikke et specifikt dansk fænomen. Alle kulturer ved, hvordan man hygger sig, men danskerne (og nordmændene) har bare et ord for det, og selvom de måske har svært ved at beskrive det, ved de alle med det samme, om noget er hyggeligt eller ej.

Kenneth, Danish Translator, Editor and Language Lead

Official language

Danish (93.5%)

Actual languages

Danish (93.5%), Turkish (0.8%), Arabic (0.7%), German (0.5%), English (0.3%), Swedish (0.3%), Norwegian (0.3%), other (3.6%).

What the top 150 best localized websites in the world do in Denmark

(Top 150 websites listed in the Global by Design ranking – published annually by Byte Level Research, this report provides a list of globally localized websites, showcasing best practices and emerging trends in their globalization)

• 96/150 localize by translating into Danish
• 1/150 localizes by translating into both Danish and Danish Sign Language
• 1/150 localizes by translating into both Danish and French
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Italian, Spanish, French, German and Simplified Chinese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian, Bahasa Indonesia, Polish, Turkish, Romanian, Arabic, Thai and Ukrainian