Translate Finnish PDFs & documents to English scanned or digital — without breaking the layout

Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. In bilingual municipalities street signs are in both, important documents come in both languages, and place names have two official forms: the Swedish name of Turku is Åbo. So if both names appear in one document, or the English version uses a different name from the one you remember, it is not necessarily a mistake. If the whole document is in Swedish, choose Swedish when uploading. Where an address or place of birth has to match an ID, confirm it against the original.

It is the century sign. A Finnish personal identity code is made up of the six-digit date of birth (day, month, year), a century sign, a three-digit individual number and a check character. A + stands for birth in the 1800s, a - for the 1900s and an A for 2000 or later. To make sure there are enough codes, new codes issued since late 2023 have started using Y, X, W, V and U (for the 1900s) and B, C, D, E and F (for the 2000s), so a Y or a B in the middle is not a typo. When checking the English version, make sure this letter and the digits on either side all match; drop a single character and the code is no longer valid.

Yes. The estate inventory has to be drawn up within three months of the death and submitted to the Tax Administration within one month after that. It lists the deceased's assets and debts, along with the names, addresses and identity codes of all the parties to the estate (kuolinpesän osakkaat). The Tax Administration uses it to calculate each person's inheritance tax, so heirs living abroad need to understand it too. The English version follows the original layout, with the valuation of each asset in its matching position. Ask the Tax Administration or a lawyer which kind of translation to use for the formal filing or for dividing the estate.