German is a member of the western group of Germanic languages (which also includes English), a subset of the Indo-European language family and is spoken by about 120 million people. It has been influenced by surrounding languages through centuries of language contact. It is the official language of Germany and Austria, an official language of Switzerland and is spoken widely in Belgium, Italy and Denmark. It is an official language of the European Union.

Due to colonization patterns, trade routes and the physical isolation created by areas of mountains and forests, very different regional dialects developed. Until about 1800, Standard German was only a written language, which followed Martin Luther's example in attempting to use comprehensive features from many dialects. In 1901, the Duden Handbook was declared the standard definition of the German language. For 40 years there were two distinct versions of this, as there was an East German version as well. The greatest official revision was the German spelling reform of 1996. Since the reform, German spelling has been in an eight year transitional period where the reformed spelling is being taught in schools, while both traditional and reformed spellings are used in the media.

German is an inflected language. The inflection not only affects the word ending, but also its stem, making German conjugation seem more difficult. Another characteristic of the language is the capitalization of all nouns and words that function as nouns. In addition compound nouns are common, resulting in some very long words indeed. It is the second most predominant language on the World Wide Web. Germany is the United States' largest trading partner in Europe, owing to its large number of technological industries such as Siemens, DaimlerChrysler, BASF and Bayer. This means that the types of German translation range from predominantly technical, pharmaceuticals, machining, automobiles, to marketing texts.

The viaLanguage Solution

viaLanguage provides accurate, quality German to English and English to German translations quickly for reasonable rates. The following are just a few of the reasons that we are the preferred German translation source for so many companies.

• We employ experienced, native-speaking translators to ensure precise translations for your target audience.
• Translation involves more skill than just knowing how to speak source and target languages. Therefore, we carefully select our translation and localization teams for their subject matter experience, knowledge of dialects and culture of the audience.
• viaLanguage has the expertise needed to make sure your translated documents, web pages and brochures are formatted properly.