Translate an Excel file into Swedish

What Swedish changes in a spreadsheet

Swedish joins compound nouns into a single word. Where English writes “delivery date”, Swedish writes leveransdatum; “customer order number” becomes kundordernummer. The overall text is not necessarily longer than the source, but individual words are. Excel only wraps at spaces, so a header such as inköpsorderbekräftelse will not break even with wrap text switched on, and it overflows or is cut off in a narrow column.

• Capitals: Swedish capitalises only the first word of a heading. Total Sales per Month becomes Total försäljning per månad. Months and weekdays are lower case (mars, måndag).
• Plurals: only two categories, singular and other, but the endings vary: 1 artikel / 3 artiklar, 1 timme / 2 timmar, and some words do not change, such as order. A label built by concatenation in a formula (=A2&" items") will not agree on its own.
• Definite form: the article is attached to the end of the noun (kund, kunden). Column headers normally use the indefinite form.
• Register: the informal du is standard in Swedish business writing, including data-entry instructions: Fyll i ditt kundnummer.

Numbers, dates and kronor: what stays put

Manuce does not touch numbers, dates or amounts: they remain values, with their number format. How they display depends on that format and on the regional settings of the computer opening the file. On a machine set to Swedish, a standard format shows a decimal comma and a space as thousands separator (12 450,75), and a short date appears as 2024-03-15.

• A custom format such as mm/dd/yyyy, or a £ or $ sign built into the format, stays as it is: nothing is converted into kronor (kr) and no amount is recalculated.
• A number typed as text (1,234.50 entered in a Text-formatted cell) will not follow Swedish conventions; convert it to a real number before uploading.
• Function names are not translated: Excel shows them in the language of its interface. The same =SUM(B2:B20) appears as =SUMMA(B2:B20) in Swedish Excel, IF becomes OM and VLOOKUP becomes LETARAD, with no change to the formula itself.

One trap: text written inside a formula is part of the formula. In =IF(C2>0,"Paid","Pending"), “Paid” and “Pending” stay in the source language, because the formula is left unchanged.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

Manuce translates the text cells on every sheet of the workbook and returns your original .xlsx with the text replaced in place: column widths, colours, borders, number formats, filters and merged cells are kept, and every calculated cell keeps its formula and goes on calculating. You also receive a Word version, a PDF and the plain text, handy for having the Swedish checked by someone who does not use Excel.

What stays in the source language:

• sheet tab names (Sales 2024 does not become Försäljning 2024);
• cell comments;
• charts;
• shapes and text boxes placed on the sheet.

Narrow columns are not widened: with Swedish compounds, a header may be cut off on screen, just as it could be in the original. Manuce also does not produce sworn or certified translations: if a Swedish body requires a translation by an auktoriserad translator (a translator authorised by Kammarkollegiet), for instance for accounts submitted to an authority, you will need an authorised translator.

Preparing the workbook before upload

• Move text out of formulas: put “Paid” and “Pending” in two cells and reference them (=IF(C2>0,$H$1,$H$2)). Those cells will be translated and the formula keeps working.
• Replace concatenated plurals with complete labels in cells, or plan to fix artikel / artiklar by hand.
• Move useful text into cells if it currently sits in a text box, a shape or a comment.
• Leave room in narrow header columns: a Swedish compound will not break, even with wrap text on.
• Note any terms to keep as they are (product names, item codes) so you can check them in the free sample and then in the delivered translation.

Checking the Swedish file on delivery

• Scroll through each sheet looking for truncated headers and adjust the width of the affected columns.
• Re-sort alphabetical lists: in Swedish, å, ä and ö come after z. A product list sorted in the source language is no longer in order once translated, and the result depends on the computer's regional settings.
• Check that any active filter still shows the right rows: cell values are now in Swedish (Betald instead of “Paid”).
• If you later export to CSV, choose UTF-8 encoding so that å, ä and ö do not turn into garbled characters.
• Rename the sheet tabs and translate chart titles and comments yourself.

In practice

1. Move any text you need translated out of formulas and text boxes into cells.
2. Upload the .xlsx file: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
3. Choose a level and read the free Swedish sample.
4. Pay, then download the translated .xlsx, the Word version, the PDF and the plain text.
5. Rename the tabs, widen truncated columns and re-sort lists.