Translate Norwegian PDFs & documents to English scanned or digital — without breaking the layout
Many Norwegian documents that need an English translation have to do with work or a home. Foreigners who have worked in Norway may need their employment contract, payslips and tax documents from the Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten) to prove their income when they go home or move on to another country. Families who have inherited a house or a mountain cabin (hytte) in Norway need to understand the probate certificate from the district court and the property extract from the land registry. Students who finished upper secondary school in Norway and go on to university in an English-speaking country have to submit an English version of their vitnemål. The English follows the original layout, with property numbers, amounts and signature fields where they were on the original.
One language, two written standards
Norwegian has two official written standards, bokmål and nynorsk. They say the same things but spell them differently: the word for I is jeg in bokmål and eg in nynorsk, and the word for not is ikke and ikkje. Both can be used for official documents, so the same kind of document issued in a different place may use different words. Dates run day, month, year, as 15.3.2024 or 15.03.2024, the points cannot be left out, and a written-out month looks like 15. mars 2024. Amounts use a space for thousands and a comma for decimals, as in 10 000 kroner and 123,45 kroner. The national identity number (fødselsnummer) has 11 digits, the first six of which are the date of birth as day, month and year.
Common scanned Norwegian documents we translate
These are the Norwegian-language documents people most often translate to English — each keeps its original layout, seals, and tables.
- Probate certificates (skifteattest)
- Land-register extracts (grunnboksutskrift)
- Tax returns and tax settlements (skattemelding, skatteoppgjør)
- Upper-secondary diplomas (vitnemål)
- Employment contracts (arbeidsavtale)
- Payslips (lønnsslipp)
How to translate a scanned Norwegian document
Upload your PDF
Drop in a scanned Norwegian PDF (one from your phone's scanner app works) or a digital PDF. Image-only PDFs are fine — no text layer needed.
We read & translate
OCR extracts the Norwegian text, then it's translated to English while the original text is erased from the page.
Download, layout intact
Get a clean PDF where tables, figures, stamps, and numbers sit exactly where they were.
Norwegian → English — frequently asked
We inherited a cabin in Norway. Can the skifteattest and grunnboksutskrift be translated to English?
Yes. Heirs can take over the estate within 60 days of the death and divide it among themselves, provided at least one adult heir takes on full responsibility for the deceased's debts; the district court (tingretten) then issues a skifteattest. The grunnboksutskrift comes from Kartverket, the land registration authority, and shows who holds registered title and whether there are mortgages or other registered rights. Norwegian properties are identified by municipality, gårdsnummer and bruksnummer, and all of these numbers stay in place in the English version. What kind of translation the transfer requires is decided by Kartverket or the lawyer handling it.
I had a D-nummer while working in Norway, and it starts with what looks like a date that doesn't exist. Is it wrong?
No. A D-nummer is issued to people who do not live in Norway but have dealings with Norwegian authorities, such as foreign workers and owners of property in Norway. Like the fødselsnummer it has 11 digits, but 4 is added to the first digit, so the first two digits, which would normally be the day, run from 41 to 71. The English version keeps the number exactly as printed; compare it with the number on your tax documents and payslips to confirm that they all belong to the same person.
My document is written in nynorsk. Which language do I choose when uploading?
Choose Norwegian. Bokmål and nynorsk are both Norwegian, and if a document mixes the two, choose Norwegian all the same. Words like eg and ikkje usually mean you are looking at nynorsk. Dates in the English version may be rewritten in English month/day order, and check the spelling of names against the passport as well.
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Simple, scan-friendly pricing. Pages are pages — no multiplier for scanned files.
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$0.30 a page, from 10 pages — you pay for exactly 10 pages.
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- $0.09 / page
- 100 pages every month
- 5 bonus pages, refreshed daily
- Up to 300 pages and 100 MB per file
- Pages reset each month
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For high-volume users with scans to translate every week.
- $0.06 / page
- 500 pages every month
- 5 bonus pages, refreshed daily
- Unused pages roll over (up to 1,500)
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Translate scanned PDFs in other languages
Guides on translating scanned documents
Can ChatGPT Translate a Scanned PDF? What Works and What Doesn't
Getting a scanned PDF into ChatGPT takes a workaround, and what comes back is text, or a rebuilt page you'll want to check. Here's how to do it and where it breaks.
Read guideTranslate a Scanned PDF on Your Phone (iPhone & Android)
Camera-translate apps are great for reading a page on the spot, but they don't give you a file — here's how to get an actual translated PDF from your phone.
Read guideWhy Does My Scanned PDF Translate to Gibberish? (And How to Fix It)
Random symbols, blank pages, or 'PDF tools are temporarily offline' — the cause is almost always the same one thing, and it's fixable.
Read guide