Pennsylvania German Translation Services
Translation Services USA offers professional translation services for English to Pennsylvania German and Pennsylvania German to English language pairs. We also translate Pennsylvania German to and from any other world language. We can translate into over 100 different languages. In fact, Translation Services USA is the only agency in the market which can fully translate Pennsylvania German to literally any language in the world!
Which translation do you need?
Online Translation
Professional Human Translation
Our translation team consists of many expert and experienced Pennsylvania German translators. Each translator specializes in a different field such as legal, financial, medical, and more.
Whether your Pennsylvania German translation need is small or large, Translation Services USA is always there to assist you with your translation needs. Our Pennsylvania German translation team has many experienced document translators who specialize in translating many different types of documents including birth and death certificates, marriage certificates and divorce decrees, diplomas and transcripts, and any other Pennsylvania German document you may need translated.
We have excellent Pennsylvania German software engineers and quality assurance editors who can localize any software product or website. We can professionally translate any Pennsylvania German website, no matter if it is a static HTML website or an advanced Java/PHP/Perl driven website. In the age of globalization, you definitely would want to localize your website into the Pennsylvania German language! It is a highly cost-effective investment and an easy way to expand your business!
We also offer services for Pennsylvania German interpretation, voice-overs, transcriptions, and multilingual search engine optimization. No matter what your Pennsylvania German translation needs are, Translation Services USA can provide for them.
Pennsylvania German Language Facts:
Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsilfaani-Deitsch), is a High German language spoken by 150,000 to 250,000 people in North America.
The word "Dutch" here is left over from an archaic sense of the English word, which once referred to the people of Germany as well as to the Netherlands. This archaism may have survived for various reasons; for example, the German word for "German" is "Deutsch", which sounds similar to the English "Dutch". Nonetheless Pennsylvania German is a dialect of German, not Dutch.
Speakers of the language can be found today mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in the United States, and Ontario in Canada. The majority of the speakers are either Amish or Old Order Mennonite although this was not the case a few generations ago; see Survival below. (Note that some other North and South American Mennonites speak Plautdietsch, which is a very different Low Saxon language.)
Pennsylvania German is well-known in popular culture for its association with the Amish. Those English speakers with a Pennsylvania German accent are typically noted for the switching of the sound of the v and w. An example of this is found in the phrase "A wonderful violin," which would be pronounced to sound like "A vonderful wiolin." However, it should be noted this is a stereotype that is promoted in tourist areas, and most Pennsylvania German speakers today speak English with only a very slight German accent.
Only Amish and Old Order Mennonites, i.e. the plain people, are passing the language along to their children in the current generation, although they were originally minority groups within the Pennsylvania German speaking population. According to the Johns Hopkins University sociologist John A. Hostetler, fewer than 10% of the original Pennsylvania German population was Amish or Mennonite.
However, there is no sign that the Old Order Amish or the Old Order Mennonites who still use the language are about to give it up. In these cultures, the language is a sign of Demut or humility, and the language serves as a barrier against the outside world. Furthermore, with the high birth rate in Amish communities, the possibility is great that the language will survive at least in the short term.
Translation plugin for website
For blogs and small, personal sites, we offer simple, free website translator tools and WordPress plugins you can self-install on your page template for fast, easy translation into dozens of major languages. (If you fall into this category, check out our Free Website Translation Services for more details!)