Estonian Translation Services

Where Estonian is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Estonian is the official language of Estonia and has been an official language of the European Union since 2004. It has more than 1 million speakers, most of them in Estonia. In 1944 tens of thousands of Estonians fled to Sweden and Germany, and many later settled in the United States, Canada and Australia, where their descendants still look for Estonian family records. The destination decides the type of translation.

Estonian translation services for Estonia and Estonians abroad

Estonian is close to Finnish, and speakers of the two often recognize each other's words, but it is not related to the languages of its southern neighbors. It has dialects, such as Võro and Seto in the southeast, but official documents are written in standard Estonian. A good translation follows the Estonian of the original, keeps every letter of the names and reads naturally to whoever receives it.

• Letters: Estonian uses the Latin alphabet with the letters õ, ä, ö and ü, and with š and ž in loanwords and foreign names. The õ is a letter of its own, not a variant of o. American documents often drop the marks, so Põld becomes Pold and Mägi becomes Magi. The translation keeps every name exactly as in the original, so tell us the form used in your US documents when you order.
• Names: an Estonian surname has the same form for men and women. Most rural families received surnames in the 1820s and 1830s, after the end of serfdom, and in the 1930s many families replaced German-sounding surnames with Estonian ones, so relatives can appear under different surnames in old records. The translation never adapts a name: it keeps the spelling of the original, and differences between your documents are something to point out when you order.
• Soviet-era records: between 1944 and 1991 many documents were issued in Russian, or in Estonian and Russian side by side, and the names of Russian speakers are written with Estonian rules, so Жуков becomes Žukov. If your document is only in Russian, or mixes both languages, tell us when you order and we confirm the options before quoting.
• Dates and numbers: dates are written day, month and year with dots, so 03.10.2026 is October 3, 2026, and the months are lowercase, as in 3. oktoober 2026. Decimals use a comma and thousands a space, so 1 500,00 is one thousand five hundred. The personal identification code (isikukood) has 11 digits: the first gives the sex and the century of birth, and the next six the date of birth.
• Documents from Estonia: the birth certificate (sünnitunnistus), the marriage certificate (abielutunnistus), the extract from the population register (rahvastikuregistri väljavõte), the diploma (diplom) with its academic transcript (akadeemiline õiend) and the criminal record extract (karistusregistri väljavõte). The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note.