Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages and is an official language of Estonia spoken by around one million of Estonian population, Estonian communities in Russia, the US, Canada and Sweden as well as small groups of Estonians in other countries.

Estonian shaped up as a language by the 12th-13th centuries as two or three dialects of the ancient Finnic language came closer together, springing off from other dialects early in the Common Era. The oldest known efforts to write in Estonian date back to the 13th century, the records being the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. There are texts originating from the 17th century both in Nothern Estonian and in Southern Estonian dialects. The Nothern Estonian and Southern Estonian writings would co-exist until the 19th century.

Nowadays, Estonia has Northern and Southern dialects still spoken which are traditionally connected with major regional cities: Tallinn, the capital city in the north, and Tartu, country’s second largest city, located in the South. People living in some southern parts of the country may speak Võru and Setu dialects which are sometimes considered to be separate languages. The dialects of Northern Estonia are influenced by Finnish and Swedish which is particularly obvious in the coastal area and across islands.

To translate from and into Estonian requires a very good command of all language peculiarities and dialect sensitivities. The Tallinn-based ATCG staff will be happy to help you at any time in any situation whatsoever. Oral interpreters will be pleased to be of assistance with the reception of guests from any country, negotiations, outdoor trips and just conversations.

Estonian vocabulary includes ancient Finno-Ugric, Finnic and Estonian words proper, as well as quite a number of ancient Baltic, German and Slavic loanwords. 
Estonian writing is based on the Latin alphabet, adding a few extra letters with diacritic signs. Phonetics comes as a fundamental principle of Estonian orthography, words usually read precisely in the way they are written, with just a few exceptions. 
Estonian grammar has 14 cases. Vowels play an essential role in Estonian, one of the most important in European languages.

Whole words may contain vowels only or may include just a few consonants. To a foreigner, vowels õ, ä, ö, ü may also look or sound odd. Interestingly enough, Estonian has no gender differentiation, even lacking pronouns he, she, and they. Moreover, Estonian has no future tense, using the present tense instead. However, there are three past tenses – Past Simple, Past Perfect, and Past Pluperfect. Apart from that, Estonian has nearly no prepositions, employing various case forms of nouns and postpositions to this end.

Word formation in Estonian resembles that of German or Swedish: several words are joined together to make up a new one. 

The ATCG experts will meet the toughest deadlines to translate from any world language into Estonian and will come up with a quality translation from Estonian. 

Estonian is one of the minor languages using modern vocabulary for all basic areas of life. That is why technical, legal, economic, medical and other translations will require an excellent command of all terms. The Tallinn-based ATCG experts will give a skilful touch to any translation into/from Estonian. What we also have on offer is notarized and apostilled translations.