Spain is a beautiful country full of different colors, landscapes, traditions ... and languages. Spain has three co-official languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician. This is something you need to take into account when approaching potential clients in Spain, and hiring professional Galician translation services is an essential step in your strategy to reach the Spanish and Galician market.
Have you already decided to translate your content into Galician? Don’t forget that it’s important to look for professionals when hiring Galician translation services. You can easily know whether a translation was done by a professional because the same mistakes consistently appear in amateur translations. If you want to know what these are, keep reading!
1. Mixing up Galician and Spanish.
Spanish and Galician coexist in a territory that goes beyond the borders of Galicia. The result is that the two languages tend to be confused, and you definitely want to avoid this in your translations.
One example is that there are no compound past tenses in Galician. Let’s talk about something that unites all Spanish people: eating tortillas. In Spanish you would say He comido tortilla, but in Galician you need only say Comín tortilla. It’s very common among Galician people to copy that structure when speaking Spanish, so if you’re in, let’s say, Madrid, and ask someone, ¿Qué has comido? and you get Comí tortilla for an answer instead of He comido tortilla, you can automatically know that this person is from Galicia.
The same contamination usually shows up with Galician speakers. An example with the verb “to say” could be the Spanish phrase Había dicho, which is usually mistranslated as Había dito* instead of Dixera. With a good Galician translation service, you’ll avoid these kinds of slips.
2. Mixing the three different linguistic areas of Galicia.
When it comes to linguistics, the Galician-speaking territory is divided into three areas. Let's choose a word like "trousers." A fisherman in Muxía would say pantalóns, a kid in Guitiriz would say pantalós, and a driver in Piedrafita would say pantalois. Someone who only speaks Galician and has no further knowledge might not be aware of that, but a professional Galician translator certainly would.
3. Not keeping up with current standards.
Galician is a language in constant evolution. The institution responsible for modifying its norms is the RAG, and these modifications are listed in a book that was issued in 1982 and has already been changed 23 times. Only by hiring a professional Galician translator can you be assured that your texts are updated.
Galician is an extraordinarily beautiful and complex language, but plenty of mistakes are usually found in translations by nonprofessional translators. If you want your texts to sound natural and meet the highest standards, you need to hire competent Galician translation services. Our team of professional Galician translators would be happy to discuss your project with you.