K International can translate your documents into Dutch. We have an established team of in-country Dutch translators who are able to translate legal, medical, technical or general correspondence.

All of our translators have at least 2 years professional experience, are qualified in translation (holding a master’s degree or equivalent) and are professionally qualified in the subject in which they translate.

Projects are managed via our multilingual project management team, keeping you informed of the progress at every milestone, this can be dynamically via our web portal or via email/telephone.

All translations will be proofread by an independent translator (equally as qualified as the original) to provide subjective feedback and a quality check. Our process produces translations that are 100% correct on time and ready for use 100% of the time.

>> Get a Quote for your Dutch Translation <<

All translated documents can be formatted after translation. This will be done in our in-house design studio (fully equipped with all the latest software). Examples of documents that we have produced are.

• Dutch magazines
• Dutch DVD subtitles
• Dutch voice overs
• Dutch website translation
• and many other Dutch language projects.

We can also provide specialisms such as Dutch Legal Translation, Dutch Medical or Pharmaceutical Translation and Dutch Technical Translation. Each uses a different team of Dutch translators to produce and proofread the text.

If you are unsure of your requirement we will examine the source copy on receipt and suggest the best process for the project.

The Dutch Language

Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie ('Dutch Language Union'). Dutch was an official language in South Africa up until 1961 (it had fallen into disuse after Afrikaans became an official language in 1925). A noticeable minority of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 16,347 (0.4%) claim sufficient fluency in Dutch to carry on an everyday conversation.

On the Caribbean islands of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch is used, but is less common than Papiamento and English. Dutch is spoken as a mother tongue by about 60% of the population in Suriname, most of whom are bilingual with Sranan Tongo or other ethnic languages. There are also some speakers of Dutch in countries with many Dutch and Flemish immigrants, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In South Africa and Namibia the closely-related language Afrikaans is spoken. There are also a number of Dutch speakers in Indonesia.

The History of the Dutch Language

It is often noted that Dutch is halfway between English and German. Taking many attributes from these languages as well as French. The history of Dutch like other Germanic languages is divided into 3 basic stages, developed through history.

450/500 – 1150 is Old Dutch

1150 – 1500 is Middle Dutch

1500 – Present day, is Modern Dutch

Today, Modern Dutch is standardised and includes contemporary Dutch. As with most modern languages as the decades develop new words are used by younger generations developing a more contemporize language. Standardisation of the language has meant a complete spelling and grammar dictionary is published every few years which is continuously updated with any new contemporary words.

The process of standardisation began in the middle ages under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardisation became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. In 1585 Antwerp fell to the Spanish army: many fled to the Northern Netherlands, especially the province of Holland, where they influenced the urban dialects of that province. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the first major Dutch Bible translation was created that people from all over the United Provinces could understand.

Usage of the Dutch language

In English the language of the people from the Netherlands and Flanders is referred to as Dutch. 'Dutch' as a word is derived from Middle Dutch duutsch, dūtsch and applied originally to continental Germanic speakers, be it of Dutch or German. By 1600, it had come to be used exclusively for the language and the people of the Netherlands. The exclusive use of Dutch for the Netherlands occurred after the Netherlands became a united, independent state and the focus of English commercial rivalry.

Dutch is the mother tongue of more than 22 million people in the Netherlands and Belgium. In northwestern France, around 60,000 people speak a Dutch dialect. The language is now widely used within the Government and education of the former colony of Suriname and in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In Indonesia, many lawyers and historians speak Dutch because of old historical ties. Dutch is taught at around 250 universities around the world. In French-speaking Belgium, northern France and Germany, many pupils choose Dutch as their second language. In 1980, the Netherlands and Flanders founded the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), which promotes Dutch worldwide and draws up rules for spelling and grammar. Dutch is used in schools throughout the country, including Friesland.

Afrikaans, which is spoken in South Africa, is an offshoot of Dutch. Dutch has also influenced other languages, especially in shipping, waterworks and agriculture.

Standaardnederlands or Algemeen Nederlands ('Common Dutch', abbreviated to AN) is the standard language as taught in schools and used by authorities in the Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles.

Vocabulary

Like English, Dutch includes words of Greek and Latin origin. Its number of Romance-based loanwords (words taken directly from other languages) is higher than in German, but much lower than in English. Even more than in English, a Romance alternative exists for many Germanic words, and the Romance word is primarily used in more formal contexts (e.g. "rechtvaardigheid" and "justitie", "verdediging" and "defensie").

Somewhat paradoxically, most loanwords from French have entered into Dutch vocabulary via the Netherlands and not via Belgium, in spite of the cultural and economic dominance exerted by French speakers in Belgium until the first half of the 20th century. This happened because the status French enjoyed as the language of refinement and high culture inspired the affluent upper and upper-middle classes in the Netherlands to adopt many French terms into the language. In Belgium no such phenomenon occurred, since members of the upper and upper-middle classes would have spoken French rather than ‘Frenchify’ their Dutch.

French terms heavily influenced Dutch dialects in Flanders, but Belgian speakers did (and do) tend to resist French loanwords when using standard Dutch. Nonetheless some French loanwords of relatively recent date have become accepted in standard Dutch, also in Belgium, albeit with a shift in meaning and not as straight synonyms for existing Dutch words. For example, "blesseren" (from French blesser, to injure) is almost exclusively used to refer to sports injuries, while in other contexts the standard Dutch verbs "kwetsen" and "verwonden" continue to be used.

Especially on the streets and in many professions, there is a steady increase of English loanwords, rather often pronounced or applied in a different way. The influx of English words is maintained by the dominance of English in the mass media and on the Internet. Unlike some other languages, Dutch adopts these new English terms with little or no resistance. Efforts to develop Dutch alternatives for English loanwords have extremely little success and indeed are often met with derision.

The Written Word

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet. Arguably the Dutch have one additional character beyond the standard alphabet, the digraph IJ. It has a relatively high proportion of doubled letters, both vowels and consonants. This is due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch language. An example of five consecutive doubled letters is the word voorraaddoos (supply box).

The diaeresis (Dutch: trema) is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the diaeresis in compound words (i.e., if the vowels originate from separate words, not from prefixes or suffixes), e.g. zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend.

The acute accent occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article 'een' (a, an) and the numeral 'één' (one); also 'hé' (hey, also written 'hee').

The grave accent is used to clarify pronunciation ('hè' (what?, what the ...?, tag question 'eh?'), 'bèta') and in loanwords ('caissière' (female cashier), 'après-ski'). In the recent spelling reform, the accent grave was dropped as stress sign on short vowels in favour of the accent aigu (e.g. 'wèl' was changed to 'wél').

Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur on a few words, most of them loanwords from French.

The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal, more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"). However, it is dwarfed by the 45,000-page "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition.

The official spelling is set by the Wet schrijfwijze Nederlandsche taal (Law on the writing of the Dutch language; Belgium 1946, Netherlands 1947; based on a 1944 spelling revision; both amended in the 1990s after a 1995 spelling revision). The Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour), is usually accepted as an informal explanation of the law. However, the official 2005 spelling revision, which reverted some of the 1995 changes and made new ones, has been welcomed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm in both the Netherlands and Belgium. As a result, the Genootschap Onze Taal (Our Language Society) decided to publish an alternative list, "het witte boekje" ("the white booklet"), which tries to simplify some complicated rules and offers several possible spellings for many contested words. This alternative orthography is followed by a number of major Dutch media organisations but mostly ignored in Belgium.

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