By expert native-speaker translators
With a population of 80 million, Germany is the largest country in Europe and it also boasts the largest economy. As a result, German translations are of great importance for any business looking to reach new customers in mainland Europe.
LEaF Translations specialises in professional German translations crafted by a small team of highly experienced, native-speaker translators. Founder of LEaF, Lucy, spent several years living in Germany and has been translating German since 2006.
If you need a website, marketing materials or documents translating into German or from German into another language, then LEaF is your perfect translation partner!
Professional German translation services
Here at LEaF we are specialists in German translations. We offer professional translation services both into German (English to German translations, French to German translations etc.) and from German into other languages (e.g. German to English translations, German to French translations). Here are some of the types of German translation services that we have been providing to highly satisfied clients since 2017:
Do you need someone to translate your website or marketing materials into German? Or perhaps you have an official German document that you need translating into English?
LEaF Translations is here to help.
Call 01904 373077 or email hello@leaftranslations.com for a free quote now.
A word from our clients
Recommended for reliable, fast, high-quality and fairly priced translations! LEaF Translations is our partner of choice
– Dr Mark Misselhorn, Caphenia
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for the really fast turnaround and the thorough translations, which were perfect for our requirements. It was a pleasure to work with LEaF. We are very happy customers!
– Alexander Kuhlmann, VIVANI chocolate
I worked with Lucy as part of a full German to English website translation project for a shared client. She was very easy to work with and very professional. The translations were excellent and were a perfect match for the specific voice of the company in question. I would definitely recommend LEaF Translations!
– Suzanne Frankenfeld, Kleine Prints
I am really happy with the work. LEaF delivered precisely what I needed in a very short space of time and in a way that I could easily fit into my existing documents. And all of this at a really amazing price. I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending LEaF!
– Elisabeth Steger, shesmile
Professional German translations that you can trust
German is spoken by around 132 million people worldwide and, perhaps more importantly as far as business is concerned, it is the language of the fourth largest economy in the world. If you want to reach out to new international markets with your business, German translations of your website and marketing materials should definitely be near the top of your to-do list.
Germany is also one of Britain’s closest neighbours and Germans regularly travel to the UK for tourism. As such, it is a sensible step for hotels, museums and other companies operating in the travel & tourism sector to translate their websites, information and marketing into German. After all, if you want German tourists to find your business online, you need to incorporate German keywords into your online presence – the easiest way to do this? With a German translation of your English website.
LEaF is here to help: we have been working closely with a number of German companies since we were founded back in 2017 and are experts in German translations. In addition to LEaF founder Lucy’s German to English translation expertise, LEaF works with a number of native German speakers to translate English content into German. We can also translate between German and French, as well as other language combinations.
Certified German to English translations
Do you need an official translation of a German passport, ID card or marriage certificate to apply for a British passport? Or perhaps you need your German academic certificates translating into English to apply for a place at a British university. Founder of LEaF Translations, Lucy Pembayun, is a qualified member of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting and is therefore authorised to issue certified German to English translations suitable for official purposes.
You do not need to post your official documents to us. Instead, you can simply send us a scanned version of your document. We send out each certified translation by registered post. All certified translations come with an official stamp and a certificate from the translator. This certificate and official stamp form part of the certified translation and must be handed in to the passport office or provided with the official translation in order for it to be valid.
If you have any questions concerning certified translations, please contact LEaF – either by ringing our HQ in York on 01904 373077 or by emailing hello@leaftranslations.com. We would be happy to talk through the process with you in more detail.
Did you know…
…that we are committed to Net Zero? Besides doing everything we can to keep our carbon emissions to the bare minimum, we also work together with the good people at Ecologi to help fund climate projects around the world and to plant the equivalent of 50 trees a month.
Affordable German translations crafted by experts
When it comes to choosing a translation provider, there are two key criteria that you need to consider: quality and price.
Free machine translation tools can cost you business
Here at LEaF Translations, we are all too well aware of free machine translation tools and the often nonsensical translations that they produce. Of course, Google Translate can be exceptionally useful if you are on holiday and your hotel hasn’t taken the effort to translate its menu into your language, or if you need to understand the gist of a sentence or phrase. But machine translation tools are, at the end of the day, machines; they do not do nuance, they really struggle with synonyms and idioms can send them into a real spin (check our blog on translating idioms for more about this topic).
When you are trying to work out the best translation provider for you, remember that error-strewn translations may actually cost you business.
Cost-effective translations from experts
Translations are an important investment – the way you speak to customers in their language is just as important as the way you speak to customers in your mother tongue. As such, it is important to choose a translation company that you trust, but also one that offers value for money. LEaF is a small, agile company. We are not currently VAT-registered, so you save an additional 20% against other translation companies; we are also determined to stay small and agile, and to keep our overheads down so we can provide truly cost-effective translations to our customers.
Want to write better English? Download our FREE guide to English grammar!
All translations proofread by a second language expert as standard
German translations from LEaF Translations are cost-effective, and they are also some of the best on the market. We want to provide the best translations that you can find anywhere and so, despite our commitment to affordability, we are also completely committed to quality.
We have put a few processes in place to ensure that we can provide quality that we can be truly proud of:
- all of our translators are exceptionally well-qualified, native speakers
- we only work with translators we know and trust – we do not have a global network of 100s of translators. If we don’t know a translator and they haven’t been recommended by someone already on our books, we don’t work with them
- all of our translations are proofread by a second language expert. Whilst some translation companies charge an additional fee to have your translation proofread by a second linguist, we do this as standard. Translating a text is a real skill and it means getting really close to the text. It can sometimes be hard to then find the necessary distance to proofread it objectively. That is why we put every text we deliver past a second pair of eyes for an objective proofread to ensure it is faultless
Case study: German to English translation of the European Aviation Security Center website
LEaF Translations has been translating German websites into English since it was founded back in 2017. We have a wealth of experience in a number of sectors, from tourism & travel to professional services, green technologies and chocolate!
Back in 2019, we were approached to translate the German website of the European Aviation Security Center into English as part of the organisation’s web redesign. The project saw us work together with copywriting company Textgenial. Owner, Petra Jahn-Firle, had this to say:
The website was translated by the wonderful Lucy from LEaF Translations. Lucy was easy to work with and professional – just as it should be!
Everyday German: what does schadenfreude mean?
Schadenfreude is a German word that has been welcomed with open arms into both the English language and the English psyche. But what does schadenfreude actually mean?
Schadenfreude – a literal translation
The German language loves a good compound noun (where two different nouns are joined together to make a new word) and schadenfreude is a particularly fine example of this. The two words making up the noun – Schaden and Freude – are actually more or less opposites: Schaden means harm, while Freude means joy. In other words, schadenfreude literally means “harm-joy” (a fine example of the problem with literal translations often found in machine translations.)
The true meaning of schadenfreude
“Harm-joy” clearly doesn’t make a lot of sense but it does at least point us in the right direction. Schadenfreude actually means taking pleasure out of someone else’s pain, thus we get joy from their harm, sort of. Football fans experience schadenfreude when their rival team loses; we may experience schadenfreude when someone we dislike gets their comeuppance. Although Schopenhauer called it “an infallible sign of a thoroughly bad heart and profound moral worthlessness”, it is important to note that schadenfreudeis associated more with “glee at discomforts and gaffes rather than at tragedies and deaths” (Guardian). And, Mr Bennet from one of the best British novels of all time, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, said: ““For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”, so it must be okay.
All the latest from the LEaF blog
- Kitty joins the team (officially)!
- August Newsletter: Association of Translation Companies, Fare la scarpetta and Feralco
- Turn Over a New LEaF Challenge
- LEaF Translations is the ATC’s August Member of the Month
- July Newsletter: International Emoji Use and Meaning, Extremely long words and Darts Corner
- LEaF Translations joins the Association of Translation Companies
