Swedish Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Swedish documents into English and English documents into Swedish for immigration filings, US courts, credential evaluations and companies working with Sweden. Every certified file is delivered with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy prepared to meet USCIS requirements, and a one-page extract normally goes out within 24 hours.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

So when a US agency asks a Swedish-born applicant for a birth certificate, the honest answer is that no such document exists and the personbevis is the equivalent record. Our translation calls it what it is, an extract from the Swedish population register, names the issuing agency, and does not dress it up as a certificate of birth. Presenting it accurately, with a note explaining the Swedish system, works better than making it look like something it is not.

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
• Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Certified Swedish Personbevis and Population Register Translation

The extract itself is short and every line on it means something: the personal identity number, the registration date, the parish or municipality of registration, citizenship, civil status, and, on the fuller versions, parents, spouse and children. Skatteverket issues these free of charge, which is worth knowing before anyone pays a service for one.

Swedish court and agency documents are the other half of the certified work. Judgments from a district court, decisions from the enforcement authority, and estate inventories in a probate matter all turn up in files where a family has assets on both sides of the Atlantic. See certified translation for what the signed certificate says, and USCIS translation for the document set by form.

• Personbevis extracts from the Swedish population register
• Marriage and death records and estate inventories
• Divorce judgments from a Swedish district court
• Extracts from the police criminal records register
• Passports and driver’s licenses

Swedish Personnummer and Names in Certified Translation

The personnummer is the spine of every Swedish record and it is not just an account number. It opens with the date of birth, the ninth digit is odd for men and even for women, and the last is a check digit, so a transposed pair of figures does not merely look wrong, it fails arithmetic. We copy it digit for digit and never reformat it. Someone who lived in Sweden without being registered as resident may instead hold a samordningsnummer, a coordination number built on the same pattern with the day of birth increased by sixty, and that is a different thing which we label as such.

Names need equal care. American systems routinely strip the dots off a with a ring above and o with an umlaut, so Bergström becomes Bergstrom and Åkesson becomes Akesson on a green card while the Swedish record keeps the original letters. Older Swedish documents can also carry a mellannamn, a name placed between the given names and the surname under the previous names act, which is not an American middle name and should not be relabelled as one. We print the Swedish spelling as it stands and note the unaccented form used on US documents.

Swedish Apostille from a Notary Public

Sweden handles apostilles differently from most of Europe. Since 2005 the authority is decentralized entirely to notaries public, who are lawyers appointed by the county administrative board, so there is no ministry to write to and no central register of them either. You find a notary in the relevant county and go.

Two things follow. Timing is usually fast, because you are dealing with an individual rather than a department. And the apostille attaches to a signature the notary can verify, so a document without a verifiable signature block is a problem before translation ever starts. For a USCIS filing the apostille is generally not required at all; it matters when the Swedish document has to satisfy a foreign court or registry. See apostille translation and notarized translation.

Swedish Diploma and Academic Transcript Translation

Sweden has no national grading scale in higher education. Each university decides its own, and the commonest is a three-step scale of pass with distinction, pass and fail, while some institutions use a seven-point scale aligned to the European credit system and some use more than one across different programs. A transcript can therefore show letters at one institution and Swedish words at another for the same level of work.

Upper secondary school is the exception and has used a single six-grade scale from A to F since July 2011, where A to E pass and F does not. Anything older follows a different system entirely, which is why the year on the certificate matters as much as the marks. We print the scale the document itself states, translate the grade words rather than converting them, and leave the American equivalence where it belongs, with the credential evaluator. See diploma translation and academic transcript translation.

Swedish Business and Legal Document Translation

Commercial Swedish work leans towards engineering, life sciences, forestry products and software, and the documents follow: company registration extracts, board minutes, shareholder agreements, employment terms, technical specifications and regulatory submissions. Swedish drafting is plainer than German or French legal style, which tempts a translator into rendering it plainly in English and losing the defined terms. We keep the defined terms defined. More on business translation and legal translation.

Swedish Translation Cost and Turnaround

The guide figure for a certified page is about $24.95 as a US market range, with running text from roughly $0.15 per source word, Swedish costing more than the largest European languages because the pool of translators is small. A personbevis or a short certificate is normally back the next working day. Estate inventories and technical files are quoted per word. See pricing.

Questions we get asked