Slovak Translation Services

Where Slovak is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Slovak is the official language of Slovakia and one of the official languages of the European Union, with more than 5 million speakers. It is also one of the official languages of the province of Vojvodina, in Serbia, and is spoken by Slovak minorities in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania. From the 1880s, emigration took Slovak to the United States, where Slovak communities grew in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey, and later to Canada, and, after Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004, to the United Kingdom and Ireland. The destination decides the type of translation.

Slovak translation services for Slovakia, Czechoslovakia and the Slovak diaspora

Slovak is one language across Slovakia, close to Czech but with its own letters, words and spelling, and Slovak documents follow their own formats. A good translation keeps every letter of the original and reads naturally to whoever receives it.

• Letters: Slovak is written in the Latin alphabet with marks of its own, such as ä, ô, ľ, ĺ and ŕ, besides č, š, ž, ď, ť and ň, and ch, dz and dž count as single letters. Systems abroad often drop the marks, so Ľudovít Štúr becomes Ludovit Stur and Žilina becomes Zilina, and the translation keeps every letter exactly as in the original.
• Names: most surnames have a female form, so the wife or daughter of Kováč is Kováčová and the female form of Malý is Malá, and some women abroad use the surname without -ová. Records from before 1918 were often kept in Hungarian or Latin, so the same family may appear as Kovács. Tell us the spelling used in your US documents when you order.
• Regions: Slovak has western, central and eastern dialects, and the written standard, codified in the 19th century, is based on the central ones. In the east, around Košice and Prešov, speech puts the stress on the second-to-last syllable, not on the first. Official documents always use standard written Slovak (spisovná slovenčina).
• Dates and numbers: dates are written day, month and year with periods and often spaces, so 3. 10. 2026 is October 3, 2026, and months in words have names close to the English ones, as in 3. októbra 2026. Decimals use a comma and thousands a space, so 1 500,00 is one thousand five hundred.
• Documents: the birth certificate (rodný list), the marriage certificate (sobášny list) and the ID card (občiansky preukaz) carry the birth number (rodné číslo), in which women have 50 added to the month. Documents issued before 1993 often name Czechoslovakia (ČSSR or ČSFR), and older ones the Kingdom of Hungary, with towns such as Pozsony for Bratislava and Kassa for Košice. The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note.