# Swedish: formal dates translated to English



## figaro_black

I am working on a smaller translation from Swedish to English that involves date of births. Should they be reversed when I translate them from Swedish or left as they are? 

In Swedish we write Year-Month-Day while in English you usually write Day-Month-Year but since it is a translation, I wonder if this still applies. For example, if a person's social security number was  1991-07-21 in Swedish, should I translate it to 21-07-1991 in English?


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## Södertjej

Välkommen till forumet!

Obviously dates should be translated into the standard format of the target language.

Keep in mind that in English you normally write month, day, year.

A person can't be referred to as a date, but if you mean you're writing someone's personnummer, that's not to be changed at all, since it's an ID number, like a passport number. 

If necessary you could add a note explaining that the first 6 digits are the birth of date year/month/day.

Det går ju bra att skriva på svenska, förresten.


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## figaro_black

Thank you. So in the case of social security numbers, the date should remain as it is in Swedish since it is more of a code than a date of birth. But how about if it is just the date of birth, for example in a court decision?

I think the month-day-year is specific to an American and Canadian context, however. I might be wrong, obviously.


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## Södertjej

If it's a date, it's a date. If it's a code (like a date based ID number), it's a code.

Yes, that's American usage but you're not providing the exact context of your target translation. 

Please, check the forum rules. Provide concrete examples of what you want to know. We're discouraged to discuss general rules without proper context.


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## hanne

When the context allows I usually use a textual representation for the month to avoid ambiguity. 21 Jul 1997 or 1997 Jul 21 can't be misunderstood, no matter what you're used to. (but of course that's not always possible)

w3 also have some recommendations on international date formats.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Som hanne & Södertjej redan nämnt, så är ju amerikanskt och brittiskt datumformat olika, i Storbritannien skriver man DD/MM/ÅÅÅÅ, USA har MM/DD/ÅÅÅÅ ('kort datum'). Jag brukar i regel skriva 'långt' datum på engelska, alltså October 12,  1978, om jag ska ange någons födelsedatum, eftersom det formatet är OK  på båda sidor om Atlanten och absolut inte kan missförstås. 

Det skulle vara lättare att hjälpa dig om Du kunde ange mer specifikt  det sammanhang där du ska översätta datum (och *det är ett standardkrav  enligt forumreglerna att man gör så*).

Det beror ju också på vilken typ av text man översätter också, och om det är löpande text eller någon form av tabell eller formulär. Själva personnumret kan du ju inte översätta, det är ju fixerat som ÅÅMMDD-NNNN. Dock kan man ju inte förvänta sig att någon utanför Sverige med lätthet listar ut att de första 6 siffrorna också är födelsedatum. Att skriva med bara siffror och snedstreck kan ju ge upphov till förvirring eftersom USA och Storbritannien har olika format. 

(T.ex. i våra svenska pass står det ju rubriker på svenska/eng/fra: Date of Birth: 12 OKT/OCT 78 på ett ställe, sedan Personal ID no: 781012-9999 på ett annat ställe. Således inget utrymme för missförstånd.)

Men som sagt, du måste vara mer specifik om vilken typ av text och hur det skall stå, i vilket sammanhang, så kan vi komma med vettigare förslag och slipper gissningslekar.


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## figaro_black

I'm sorry, I'm just unused to being detailed.

As for context, I am translating a doctor's certificate where the doctor who has written the certificate gives the date of birth for the patient in question from Swedish to British English or I am trying to. Sometimes I have to check to make sure I am keeping to British English and not straying over into American English, to stay consistent, which is hard to do. The date in question is not a social security number as such but just a date of birth, since the person in question is a refugee and so has no official Swedish social security number yet. At the same time, the person is registered in the Swedish system with the date of birth as it is written in Swedish, and therefore it functions as a sort of social security number without actually being one hence my confusion since it is neither one thing nor the other. I hope that makes the context clearer?


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## Wilma_Sweden

If it looks like a personnr, e.g. 781012-ABCD or something similar, with letters mixed in after the dash, it's probably a temporary personnr given by Swedish health care facilities. In that case I would describe it as a Swedish temporary ID number, and would state the date of birth in addition to it. If it's just written as 781012, then I would treat is as Date of birth only. I would write the date of birth with full name of the month written in letters as above.

/Wilma


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## e2efour

If it's a medical certificate, it's unlikely that anyone who reads it would be interested in the personnummer. But it makes sense to translate the first six digits (if that's all there are) into a date of birth, preferably writing the date in full as Wilma suggests. But regardless of whether the entire code is written, one would expect a DOB to be written somewhere on a medical certificate.

I sometimes get hospital records to translate, where the personal identity number is occasionally quoted (it should be removed from the text, of course, for reasons of confidentiality). I just repeat the entire 10 digits since the reader would understand it as a code.


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## figaro_black

Thank you everyone. I have learnt a lot about dates and how to write and translate them in this thread. I have just never, ever come across the need to translate a date of birth before. I have decided to go with the international format, which happens to be the Swedish one, since the translation I am doing will be used in an international context and so the people who will take part of it are used to different ways of writing out dates and will probably assume it is written according to the international standard.


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## Södertjej

figaro_black said:


> I have decided to go with the international format, which happens to be the Swedish one, since the translation I am doing will be used in an international context and so the people who will take part of it are used to different ways of writing out dates and will probably assume it is written according to the international standard.


Just a thought: the international format (YY/MM/DD) is not so common outside Sweden so to be on the safe side, I think Wilma's suggestion is the best way to go. October will be understood wherever you write it, while if you write 10, the format may be misleading.


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## figaro_black

That is a very good point, but since the year is written out completely I think the risk of confusion is really rather low. The format I use is YYYY-MM-DD, for example 2008-11-13. I think most people, except perhaps the Americans, would read that as the 13th of November 2008, no?


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## Södertjej

Vad jag menar är att om dagen är den 13:de eller senare, då spelar det ingen roll, det finns ju bara 12 månader, men ta ett annat datum, t. ex. 2008-05-10. Hur ska man veta om det är engelsk eller amerikansk format du använder? Är det den 10:de maj eller den 5:e oktober.

Det var det jag menade.


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## figaro_black

Jag förstår att det är vad du menar och du har helt rätt i att det är bättre att skriva ut datumet och i normala fall skulle jag göra som du föreslår då det helt klart är det bästa alternativet men samtidigt är det i det här fallet läkarintyg där datum normalt anges i siffror så det handlar om att bevara stilen också.


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## e2efour

You may be underestimating the use of this so-called international method of writing the date. I have never seen it in the UK and, as far as I understand, it is only used in the field of computers.
If you google the ISO standard you can find an article by someone called Kuhn, who seems to have a vested interest in promoting it. He says it cannot be confused with other popular date notations, which is hardly true. If, for example, we have as the date 11/04/2010 in the UK and 04/11/2010 in the US, why cannot either of these be confused with 2010/04/11?
He also says "strings containing a date followed by a time are also easily comparable and sortable (e.g. write 1995-02-04 22:45:00)". This is true and I keep this if written in a patient's notes (journalanteckningar).
But is it not the case that only one date will appear on a medical certificate? In which case one could argue that it is important that there is no confusion.

An alternative is to have a heading above the date like yyyy-mm-dd, when you can keep to the style of the original.


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## Pedro y La Torre

English-speakers normally write the date as day, month, year. The only exception to this are Americans.


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## Södertjej

figaro_black said:


> Jag förstår att det är vad du menar och du har helt rätt i att det är bättre att skriva ut datumet och i normala fall skulle jag göra som du föreslår då det helt klart är det bästa alternativet men samtidigt är det i det här fallet läkarintyg där datum normalt anges i siffror så det handlar om att bevara stilen också.


Stil? Det handlar om att skriva ett datum på en halvoficiell handling, det är inte en roman. Därför ska man skriva det sa tydligt som möjligt. Ingenting säger att datum som skrivs med siffror inte får skrivas med ord. Speciellt om det ska förenkla saken.

Som sagt, det internationella formatet används inte in vanliga fall utanför Sverige. T. ex. idag fick jag se ett belgiskt ID-kort (dvs EU's). Födelsedatumet var skrivet DD-MM-ÅÅÅÅ.


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## hanne

Does anyone, anywhere "naturally" use yyyy-dd-mm? I thought dd-mm-yyyy and mm-dd-yyyy were the two ones commonly used around the globe, meaning that yyyy-mm-dd would be sort-of-unambiguous, because it's "obviously" tech-lingo.

But like most others I'd need a very good reason to NOT use letters for the month.


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## Södertjej

hanne said:


> Does anyone, anywhere "naturally" use yyyy-dd-mm?


Yes, the Swedes. And once an elderly gentleman gave me a lecture about how that was the right way to write a date (as it's the international standard whatever it's called). So I was informed about how the rest of the world's got it all wrong not writing dates as they should be written.

Another peculiarity is how the Swedes number the weeks. To the point to completely ignore the date (in any format). 

So a typical request for availability from Swedish tourists for an apartment I used to rent (by the Mediterranean) was "Is it available from Tuesday on week 27 to Sunday on week 28?".

Quite hilarious on this side of the world...


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## hanne

Södertjej said:


> Yes, the Swedes. And once an elderly gentleman gave me a lecture about how that was the right way to write a date (as it's the international standard whatever it's called). So I was informed about how the rest of the world's got it all wrong not writing dates as they should be written.


No, the ISO standard (which is what I call the "international" one) is yyyy-mm-dd, not yyyy-dd-mm.


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## Södertjej

hanne said:


> No, the ISO standard (which is what I call the "international" one) is yyyy-mm-dd, not yyyy-dd-mm.


Oh, sorry, I got it all mixed up. 

The Swedes use the ISO standard (yyyymmdd), not yyyyddmm.


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## figaro_black

The translation is sent to the lawyer who needed it, so it is out of my hands now. In this case what the date is perceived as isn't all that important but in cases where it is I will be sure to write it out with letters in the future. All I really wanted - even if I was probably unclear about it - was to insure that the format I choose was acceptable which it seems to be if not exactly ultimate.


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