Translate Video to Norwegian

What to expect when translating into Norwegian

Norwegian translations use Bokmål, the written standard used by most Norwegians. Norwegian builds compounds like Swedish and Danish, and translated text is close to English in length.

Translations are written in Bokmål, the written standard most Norwegians use.

The Norwegian voice track

Dubbing in Norway is mostly for children's content and training; for adult audiences, offer subtitles alongside the voice.

Voice, MP4, subtitles and transcripts: 400 credits (40¢). Subtitles and transcripts only: 8 credits (0.8¢).

Norwegian subtitles

Norway subtitles foreign TV rather than dubbing it (except for children), so Norwegian subtitles are the expected format for adult viewers.

Norwegian (Norsk) is written in the Latin alphabet.

Switch Full translation output off for subtitles only: 20 credits (2¢). If the video is already in Norwegian, select Norwegian as the language instead and the subtitles come back untranslated — see Norwegian transcription.

Translating audio files into Norwegian

Podcasts and recordings go through the audio translator, which returns a Norwegian M4A and transcripts: 1,300 credits ($1.30) with voice, 26 credits (2.6¢) as text only.

Who translates into Norwegian

Norwegian is spoken in Norway. It's used by Nordic companies, Norwegian public bodies, and energy and maritime firms with Norwegian staff.

Which written standard did you get?

Norwegian has two official written standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk, and the language picker offers a single Norwegian option. Rather than assume, check the translated transcript or subtitle file yourself. A handful of very common words give the standard away almost immediately:

I

jeg in Bokmål, eg in Nynorsk

not

ikke in Bokmål, ikkje in Nynorsk

what

hva in Bokmål, kva in Nynorsk

how

hvordan in Bokmål, korleis in Nynorsk

she

hun in Bokmål, ho in Nynorsk

from

fra in Bokmål, frå in Nynorsk

Search the SRT for these pairs. If you find forms from both columns in the same file, flag it for your reviewer, because mixed text reads as a mistake to Norwegian readers.

Some municipalities, schools and public bodies, many of them in western Norway, use Nynorsk as their official written standard, and some organisations have their own policy on when each standard is used. Check yours before you publish. If you need a standard other than the one in the file, budget for a Norwegian editor to adapt the subtitles; edited text can't be fed back into the voice track, so the dub stays as it was generated. Translating video for regional audiences covers variant decisions like this one.

Optional forms inside Bokmål, and du for everyone

Bokmål itself allows choices. A book can be boka or boken, a girl jenta or jenten, and the sun sola or solen, depending on style. Newspapers, public bodies and companies each pick a house style, and a translation can mix conservative and more radical forms within a single video. If your organisation has a style, add its preferred forms to the reviewer's list next to the marker words above.

Register is simpler than in most European languages. Norwegians address almost everyone as du, and the old polite De now sounds dated or even ironic. A presenter speaking to a group uses dere. If the subtitles show De or switch between du and dere for the same audience, that is a translation slip worth fixing.

HMS, offshore terms and mixed crews

Norwegian workplaces say HMS (helse, miljø og sikkerhet) where English says HSE or EHS, and a safety briefing that keeps the English abbreviation reads as untranslated. Check that the abbreviation and related terms such as verneombud (safety representative) appear in the form your organisation uses. Offshore and maritime vocabulary often mixes English and Norwegian on purpose; list the terms crews actually use and check the translation against that list.

Crews on Norwegian sites often include speakers of other languages. One job produces one target language, so a briefing for a mixed crew means one job per language; the Polish video translator covers one common second language. Safety material should always be checked by someone who reads the target language well, as safety training video translation explains.

Norwegian conventions to proofread

• Prices with a decimal comma and a space between thousands: kr 1 250,50.
• Dates as 01.10.2026 or 1. oktober 2026, times as kl. 14.30.
• Quotation marks written as guillemets: «slik».
• Weekdays and months in lower case: mandag, oktober.
• Compounds written as one word. Splitting them (særskriving) can change the meaning and is easy to miss in a quick read.

Costing an HMS induction

Norwegian adults are used to subtitled television, so for office audiences the subtitle files alone may be enough. For crews watching on a break-room screen with background noise, a voice track with subtitles alongside helps more. Subtitles versus dubbing lays out the trade-offs.

Before a Norwegian release

• The marker words point to one written standard, and it is the one your audience expects.
• Optional Bokmål forms follow one house style.
• du for one viewer, dere for a group, and no De.
• HMS and site terminology match your organisation's usage.
• Numbers, dates, times and quotation marks in Norwegian style.
• No split compounds.
• æ, ø and å intact in the subtitle file.
• A Norwegian-speaking reviewer has approved any safety content.

Using the tool on this page

• The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
• Only the audio is sent for processing — the video stays on your device — and audio and text are deleted within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
• You can download a translated video that keeps your music and effects, the translated audio as M4A, a transcript and subtitles (SRT and VTT). Every output, step and limit is explained on the video translator page.