Have you ever tried to translate at least one paragraph written in another language? Not to read it, but to translate it for others who don’t understand it? Did you see the difference between understanding the content and trying to express it in your native language clearly and smoothly? If you’ve ever done that, you understand the difference between speaking two languages and translating. Although without the first you can’t do the second, there’s certainly more to add to the mix.
Neither can you rely solely on Google Translate. Such tools translate all the fragments separately, giving you a mishmash of words with little regard for their connection to each other. Only human translators can delve deeper into the context, evaluate all its nuances and determine the best translation. It's okay if professional translators use machine translation as a tool, but they need to carefully oversee the process and interject with corrections whenever the algorithm makes a mistake.
1. Many cases.
For further explanation, let’s talk about cars for a bit. In English, you’d say “Whose car is this?” or “Who drives this car?” or “What color is your car?” and in every sentence, you’d use the same case. Meanwhile, in Lithuanian, every sentence would show “car” in a different case. The case system is used for nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numbers. It makes Lithuanian hard to translate, but nothing that a professional Lithuanian translation service couldn’t manage.
2. Flexible word order.
Lithuanian’s flexible sentence structure can be adapted to the context. Switching the positions of two words might highlight different parts of the sentence. For example, a translation of the sentence “The dog wasn’t afraid of you” might highlight that the dog was not afraid, or that it wasn’t afraid of you by changing the word order. It’s only a matter of the context. A good Lithuanian translation service understands contextual nuances and conveys them.
3. Word-for-word translations.
Lithuanian has a different grammatical structure from English, so translating word for word leads to inaccuracy. For example, Lithuanian doesn’t have as many prepositions as English does, instead using word cases. This might be very tricky on occasion, as some English prepositions don’t have corresponding Lithuanian equivalents. In this and other, similar situations, Lithuanian translation services have to express the meaning in other words. After all, it’s the meaning that’s important, right?
4. Ogoneks.
Another fun thing about Lithuanian is that it uses ogoneks and therefore has four entirely new letters: ą, ę, į, and ų. Vowels with ogoneks are mostly used at the ends of words. However, there are also exceptions and memorable spelling. And while it’s easy to mix things up, you won’t find mistakes in a professional Lithuanian translation.
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Fortunately, our professional Lithuanian translators are extensively experienced in overcoming these very challenges. You have a Lithuanian text to translate, and we have vast knowledge and expertise in professional Lithuanian translation. We’d be delighted to help!