Gengo offers professional German translation services at affordable rates. Thousands of companies large and small trust Gengo to fuel their global growth.
Working with Gengo gives you access to thousands of certified German translators with years of translation and localization experience, as well as our intuitive platform and embedded quality tools. Our expert team can help you manage projects of any size to find a flexible, efficient and economical solution to your German translation needs.
German Translation Rates
Choose between two different levels of quality and pricing to match your needs. All German translators have been pre-tested for each level to ensure high quality translations.
From
$0.06 /word
From
$0.12 /word
Certified Customer Reviews
We are always happy to receive feedback from our customers about their experience using the Gengo platform. Listed here are real reviews, ratings, and comments that customers have left after they received their completed translation. Where a Quality Score of 3 or greater was received, the comment is marked in green, otherwise it is marked in red.
English to German Translation
Despite their interlinked histories and borrowing from each other significantly, translating from English to German is no simple task. German nouns, for example, are gendered, while in English they are not. Sentence structure, too, differs between the two languages, with German containing far more rigorous rules than English concerning word order and grammar. Only translators well-versed in the nuances and complexities of both languages are able to ensure translated content retains its authority and effectiveness.
While traditional English to German translation services calculate their fees by page or per hour, Gengo has a simple and easy to calculate per word pricing system. This way, our customers can be sure of the price they will pay before any work has even begun. Pricing made simple.
German Translation Services
Gengo is a leading provider in English to German translation and German to English translation services. With thousands of professional English to German translators located worldwide, no other translation company can provide fast and high quality German translation at a more competitive rate. We currently deliver hundreds of German translation projects each month, easily and at scale.
Our areas of expertise
Gengo has an impressive track record of delivering professional German translation services in a wide range of document and content types, including:
- German website localization
- German mobile app localization
- German game localization
- German product description translation
- Customer support translation
- German marketing copy, ads and social media
- German news articles and entertainment
- German travel listings and guides
- German document translation
- German emails, letters and more
German Translation Tips
Translation text expansion
The German language is known for its long compound words, usually created to replace a sequence of smaller words (for example, “Freundschaftsbezeugungen” which refers to demonstrations of friendship). One result os this is that text translated from English into German can be up to 35% lengthier than the original text. This can have a signicant impact on design, meaning things such as navigation menus, taglines and displays may need to be altered. This is something that should always be kept in mind when translating between English and German.
Formal vs. informal speech
There are two forms of speech in German: formal and informal. Which one is used depends on the person you are addressing and the level of politeness the situation or setting calls for. Although the informal form may be appropriate in some contexts, it’s generally best to stick to the formal form when addressing a German audience.
Professional German Translators
Gengo’s German translators are experts in their field with years of professional translation experience under their belts. This is why Gengo is trusted by global companies like YouTube, Airbnb and Sony to translate content of the highest quality at lightning speeds. Our innovative translation platform and global network of translators means that no matter the size or complexity of your German translation project, we are able to deliver on time, every time, with quality assured.
If you are looking to translate your English content not only to German, see this list:
- Japanese translator, see Japanese translation
- Spanish translator, see Spanish translation
- Chinese translator, see Chinese translation
- Portuguese translator, see Portuguese translation
- Dutch translator, see Dutch translation
- Italian translator, see Italian translation
- French translator, see French translation
- Arabic translator, see Arabic translation
Popular German Translation Phrases
Take a look at some of the most popular and searched for English phrases and their German translations.
| What to translate from English | German translation |
|---|---|
| Hello | Hallo |
| Thank you | Danke |
| Goodbye | Auf Wiedersehen! |
| Good morning | Guten Morgen |
| I love you | Ich liebe dich |
| Please | Bitte |
| How are you? | Wie geht es Dir? |
| I miss you | Ich vermisse dich |
| Happy birthday! | Alles Gute zum Gebrurtstag! |
German Language Facts
German is a West Germanic language, closely related to other languages of the same family such as English, Dutch and Afrikaans. Despite geographic proximity, the German language differs significantly from European Romance languages like French, Italian and Spanish.
- With over 100 million native speakers, German is the most widely spoken language in Europe, beating out Italian, French, Spanish and even English.
- The German language comes from proto-German, which dates as far back as 500 B.C.
- Though most German speakers are located in Germany, German is also an official language of five other countries: Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
- German is the third most widely taught language, just behind Spanish and French, with over 15 million language learners worldwide.
- Due to their close relationship, German and English share over half of their vocabulary.
German outside of Germany
Although the vast majority of German speakers can be found in Germany itself, it is important to remember that the language can also be heard elsewhere, including in Austria (8 million German speakers) and parts of Switzerland (5 million speakers).
Standard German, Austrian German and Swiss German are generally mutually intelligible, despite a considerable number of vocabulary differences. A particularly noticeable difference between Standard German and Swiss German is the latter’s adoption of the English terms for technological innovations. For example, Swiss German speakers have adopted the English word “harddisk” (capitalized to “Harddisk”), while in standard German, the word “Festplatte” is used.
Speakers of English will be familiar with a number of German words, perhaps without even realising. German loanwords include commonly used terms such as hamburger, frankfurter, rucksack, doppelganger and zeitgeist, as well as less common terms such as ersatz (a substitute, usually of inferior quality), schadenfreude (taking pleasure from the misfortune of others) and verboten (something forbidden). The shared roots of German and English, as well as the adoption of food, cultural artefacts and concepts originating in Germany, have led to this borrowing.
German Localization Tips
Localizing websites using hreflang meta tags
When translating a website it’s important to ensure that search engines are able to understand exactly what language (or languages) your content is available in. In addition to the language attribute on the <html> tag, each page should also include a <head> section in which links to its localized equivalent are listed.
If the primary language of your website is English, for example, and you want to translate it into German, then every translated page should include the following block of code in the <head> section:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/about/" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/de/about/" hreflang="de" />
Keep in mind that this block should be added to both the original and the localized versions of your page (in this case: example.com/about/ & example.com/de/about/). By doing this, each page points to every available localized version of itself, making it easy for search engines to understand the structure of your site and display the appropriate translation for every user.
Targeting a language and a country
In addition to specifying the language that your content is written in, you can also specify particular countries that you would like to target. This is ideal for a language that is spoken in multiple countries, such as German (spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, among others). To do this, the country to be targeted is simply included in the hreflang attribute, like so:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/de/" hreflang="de" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/de-AT/" hreflang="de-at" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/de-CH/" hreflang="de-ch" />