Romanian: Translation & conference interpreting

Romanian is the official language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The Romanian language is also one of the six official languages in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia. There are more than 34 million people worldwide who speak Romanian, approximately 30 million of whom are native speakers.

Romanian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family, belonging to the Italic branch. Strictly speaking, when people say “Romanian“, they actually mean Daco-Romanian. “Romanian“ is also an umbrella term for the languages Aromanian, Daco-Romanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Together with Dalmatian, which is extinct, these form the group of the Balkan Romance languages.

Some people call the language spoken in Moldova Moldovan. In reality, it is only a dialect of Romanian. However, some Romanian terms that are not common in Romania are used in Moldova. Therefore, the Romanian translator or interpreter has to be familiar with the regional differences and particularities and be able to convey them correctly to avoid misunderstandings or even misinterpretations. Smooth communication is a top priority, especially when dealing with authorities, courts or other important appointments, and this depends to a large extent on the interpreter. Thus, it is always advisable to entrust an experienced and competent language expert with the Romanian translation of your texts or with interpreting. The Nuremberg interpreting and translation agency AP Fachübersetzungen works exclusively with certified and experienced Romanian translators and interpreters, thus ensuring the high quality and accuracy of your Romanian translation. Whether you need a consecutive, simultaneous, liaison, court or conference interpreter for Romanian, you can always rely on our interpreting and translation agency.

Like all Romance languages (e.g. Spanish, Italian or Portuguese), Romanian also came from Latin. It developed out of Vulgar Latin, which was spoken in the Roman provinces Dacia, Illyria, Pannonia, Dardania and Moesia. The Romanian language is the most eastern of the Romance languages. Due to the geographical proximity to Slavic peoples, some Slavic influences can be found in the Romanian language as well. Yet Romanian was able to preserve some characteristics of the Latin language which were lost in the other Romance languages because of its geographical isolation from them. But at the same time, the Romanian language also developed some characteristics that do not exist in the other Romance languages.

Today, Romanian uses the Latin alphabet plus five special characters (e.g. ӑ and î). However, some letters only occur in loan words or proper nouns (k, q, w and y). But this was not always the case. Up until 1862, Romanian was written using the Cyrillic alphabet.

75% of loan words in the Romanian vocabulary come from other Romance languages, 15% come from Slavic languages and 10% from other languages such as English or German.

The claim that Romanian is the only Romance language with three genders is disputed. According to classification, it could either have the neuter gender apart from masculine and feminine or only nouns that cannot clearly be classified as masculine or feminine. These nouns are also called ambiguous.

As in German and English, there are 2 articles in Romanian. However, the Romanian language mediator has to be careful because the definite articles in Romanian are directly added after the reference word, while articles in German and English always come before the noun. Yet the indefinite article is put in front of the noun as in the German and in the English language. As in other Romance languages, a plural form of the indefinite article exists in Romanian. Since there is no direct equivalent of this in German or English, the Romanian translator has to try to render the sense as precisely as possible, e.g. using paraphrases.

The position of adjectives in a sentence is a further parallel to the other Romance languages. In most cases, the adjective comes after the noun in Romanian, but in special cases, it can also come before the noun. Likewise, personal pronouns can often be left out in the Romanian language. This is never possible in German.

Much like the number of genders, the number of cases in Romanian is equally disputed. In theory, there are 5 different cases, but in practice, many nouns have the same form for nominative and accusative and the same form for genitive and dative.

Due to these special features of the Romanian language, it is advisable to entrust the translation of your texts or interpretation into and from Romanian to a native speaker or very experienced language expert. Therefore, at AP Fachübersetzungen we work exclusively with certified and experienced specialist Romanian translators and interpreters and can thus guarantee the high quality and accuracy of your Romanian translation.