Adelphi Translations are experts in website translation in FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish). Adelphi Translations has produced many websites in all these languages. To see more examples of websites translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish please visit our website portfolio HERE

Adelphi has its own in-house web technicians and never sends its website localisation elsewhere. We not only produce the translated website for you but we can also make sure it reads correctly in the different browsers used today before publishing. 

French Website Translation and Text Expansion

French is the main culprit and can expand as much as 50% from the original English. Why would this be? The English language has a much larger vocabulary than French, drawing as it does on two entirely different sources (Latin + Germanic). The French language has also been much more strictly controlled by the Acadamie Francaise, which has tried to keep the language ‘pure’ and free from foreign influences. When studying French in the 80s I always remember the ‘correct’ equivalent for ‘weekend’. The commonly used ‘Le weekend‘ was frowned upon by the Academy and the official translation was ‘le congé au fin de la semaine’, literally ‘the break at the end of the week’.

Basic grammatical differences also contribute to the expansion. The possessive ‘s’ in English requires more words in French: ‘Paul’s car’ becoming ‘La voiture de Paul’, ‘bigger’ becomes ‘plus grand’ etc. 

Please click on images to enlarge

French website translation, also translated into German and Italian

German Website Translation and Text Expansion

There are often very long single words in German, which can create problems. This can produce untidy line-breaks when placed in narrow columns. If you are considering translating you website into German please take into account the length of german words and try not to stuff the English pages with text.

Julian, unser Auszubildener,
kam zu uns während eines
Studienpraktikums,
so hat er es sehr schnell
begriffen.

Some German words are very long. They even have awards for the longest German word of the year! In 1999 the winner was: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

The monster word consisted of 63 letters, 20 syllables, and ten individual words—all to express a law having to do with British beef (Rindfleisch) and the so-called “mad cow disease.”

The longest German word is Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, which translates into English as the ‘Association for Subordinate Officials of the Head Office Management of the Danube Steamboat Electrical Services’. 

German website translation, also translated into French, Italian and Spanish

Italian Website Translation and Text Expansion

In comparison, Italian is not such a problem as the text usually expands by about 10% and this can be resolved in the website conversion stage. You have to go back a long way to find the longest word in Italian. In 1677 the word precipitevolissimevolmente (as fast as possible), was coined. 

Italian website translation, also in German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese

Spanish Website Translation and Text Expansion

Spanish too does not expand so much and can usually be accommodated during the website localisation phase. If you want to be funny in Spanish, and liguistic at the same time, you can claim that the word ‘arroz’ is the longest in their language, because it starts with ‘a’ and ends with ‘z’. Who says linguists have no sense of humour?

Spanish website translation, also translated into French, German and Spanish

How to avoid some problems when making websites in FIGS

Here is something to bear in mind if the translation is being produced for a website for all these languages. Having text on images is generally a bad idea. Consider a button used on a web form or for navigation on a web site. The image is usually of a fixed length. If the translations into FIGS produces a longer word the image may have to remade. This will, at the least, be more costly or, at most, it may require a complete redesign of the web page or site.

So the general rule with FIGS is: text will expand. If the original English web site is created with this in mind, it will save expense and hassle later on in the localisation process.

If you have any questions regarding website translation please call us on +44 (0)114 272 3772