Translations and Other Language Solutions in Lithuanian Language

Lithuanian belongs to the Baltic group of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language in Lithuania while as a minority language, it is mostly used in Latvia, Estonia and to a certain extent in Poland and Belarus.

Lithuanian is the native language of approximately 4 million people, primarily in Lithuania, where it is the only official language. It belongs to the Baltic languages and is closely related to Latvian. It is the oldest living language of the Indo-European family.

Out of the three Baltic languages – Lithuanian, Latvian and Prussian – concerning the ancient forms of the Proto-Indo-European language, Lithuanian takes the 2nd place: Lithuanian grammatical forms are considerably closer to Proto-Indo-European than Latvian forms. However, it is more modern than Prussian, which became extinct in the 18th century. Consequently, today Lithuanian is the oldest living Indo-European language. Standard Lithuanian was not influenced by Finno-Ugric languages as it was with Curonian, Semigallian, Selonian and Latvian, yet the influence of the Finno-Ugric is noticeable in the north of Lithuania, where the lands inhabited by Curonians, Semigallians and Selonians used to be. The mixture of these languages has had the greatest impact on word stress in the northern Lithuanian sub-dialects.

Lithuanian is related to Latvian. Both languages are said to have developed together until the thirteenth century when they divided into separate tongues. The origins of these languages may be traced back to the third century B.C. when the Baltic coast was inhabited by ancient Balts.

Within the Lithuanian language, two primary dialects are distinguished: Aukštaitian and Samogitian (Highland and Lowland Lithuanian). Both dialects contain three sub-dialects, which are further categorised into 14 sub-dialect variations.

The oldest written Lithuanian artefact, a liturgical text, dates from 1525, and the first printed book in Lithuanian was produced for religious reasons in 1547 Königsberg – the translated catechism of Martynas Mažvydas, which was the first book in Lithuanian. The book is written in the Southern Samogitian sub-dialect. However, there are traces of the Western Aukštaitian sub-dialect as well. Approximately 20% of the words in this book were loanwords, mainly Slavicisms. From the 16th century until the end of the 18th century there were two variations of the writing system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: eastern writing, which was based on the Eastern Aukštaitian sub-dialect around Vilnius, as well as the central variant, which was created in Central Lithuania near the city of Kėdainiai, based on the local variation of the Western Aukštaitian sub-dialect.

Jonas Jablonskis made a significant contribution to the development of the standard Lithuanian language, which was based on the Aukštaitian dialect.

Standard Lithuanian developed amid harsh conditions for the nation, where the policy of Russification pursued by the Russian Empire prevented the publication of literature in Lithuanian in the region of what is currently Lithuania for half a century after 1864. Nevertheless, books were covertly smuggled in.

From 1863 to 1904, when the Russian Empire prevented the use of Latin letters in its territory (Lithuania belonged to the Russian Empire at that time), many people risked their lives to bring Lithuanian books from Prussia. Nowadays, these book smugglers are national heroes, and there is a monument to their selfless patriotism in Lithuania, believed to be the only one of its kind.

Most loanwords in Lithuanian come from Slavic (Old Russian, Belarussian, Polish and Russian) and Germanic languages. This is explained by the historical influence of these languages, as well as the close ties between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Prussia. In addition to these borrowings, Lithuanian also has a small number of borrowings from Finno-Ugric and other Baltic languages.

In the 20th century, most loanwords came from the Russian language.

After the restoration of independence, the number of borrowings from English (anglicisms) has increased.

Many of the popular personal names are connected with nature. It comes from ancient times, when Lithuanians, like Latvians, lived closely with nature and used to give their children the names of trees, natural phenomena or flowers. Some words, for example, Rūta (flower, medicinal plant), Eglė (spruce), Aušra (morning) and Gintaras (amber), are common even today.

One of the most interesting facts about the Lithuanian language and Lithuanians is the possibility to determine whether a woman is married by her last name.

If a Lithuanian woman chooses to use her husband’s surname when she gets married, the ending -ienė is added to her surname. For example, if a woman with the surname Kazlauska marries, her surname becomes Kazlauskienė. Generally speaking, if a woman’s last name ends in -ytė or -aitė, she is not married. However, this tradition is gradually fading, and women in Lithuania often choose to write their names with the ending -ė (in this case Kazlauskė instead of Kazlauskaite or Kazlauskiene) so that people cannot discern a woman’s marital status just by reading her surname.

Today’s Lithuanian writing system is mostly morphological. It was established from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Even from the earliest writings (dating from the 16th century), Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet. It has been revised and today consists of 32 letters: 12 vowels (a, ą, e, ę, ė, i, į, y, o, u, ų, ū) and 20 consonants (b, c, č, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, š, t, v, z, ž). To label phonemes /x/, /ʣ/ and /ʤ/, letter combinations “ch”, “dz” and “dž” can be used as well. In phonology, 14 vowel and 45 consonant phonemes are distinguished. Vowel phonemes on their own can function as syllables, while consonant phonemes cannot. Contrary to Latvian, all Lithuanian consonants, except j which is always soft, can be both hard and soft, depending on the position.

Lithuanian is like brain exercise. The language is old and resembles classical Indian Sanskrit, and to some extent Latin and Greek as well. The oldest living Indo-European language is studied by researchers to this day.

The complexity of Lithuanian largely is connected to its status as the oldest Indo-European language. Lithuanian is believed to be one of the most difficult languages in the world. According to the US Foreign Service Institute, Lithuanian is classified as a very difficult language, nevertheless, it is easier to learn than Arabic, Korean or Chinese. Certainly, it is mostly connected with grammar rules that have no analogues to any other language in the world, along with the sounds of speech.

Words have a wide variety of stresses that can completely change the meaning, depending on their use. Lithuanians use a lot of diminutives and have no swearwords. If Lithuanians feel a need to swear, they can call someone a snake or a toad. Lithuanians also have the letter “ė”, which does not exist in any other language. This letter is considered a symbol of femininity, as it is used at the end of female names.

Learning to read Lithuanian would not be difficult, because the letters are pronounced as they are written.

It is more difficult to distinguish the genders of nouns.

Lithuanians themselves joke that the fastest way to learn Lithuanian is to fall in love with a Lithuanian.

Our team of interpreters and translators work with the translations of standard documents as well as notarially certified translations. Or course, simultaneous translating can be performed as well. Skrivanek provides proofreading and stylistic improvement of texts in Lithuanian, and if necessary, redaction and terminology checking.

The following translations from/to Lithuanian are most often performed –e-commerce content and homepages, product labels, advertising slogans, SEO texts, Google keywords, localisation and adaptation of content, as well as translations of marketing, legal content and business-related documents. Due to the close economic cooperation between Latvia and Lithuania, we also perform translations in the following areas – equipment and technology, finance, medicine, communications, public relations, transport, science, agriculture, textile industry, tourism, European Union documents, industrial, natural sciences, retail and technology translations.

For natural persons, we process identity documents, marriage certificates, birth certificates, educational documents, passports, medical documents and other translations.