Greek Retail & E-Commerce Translation

About the Greek Language

The Greek language is the official language of Greece (Hellas) and Cyprus. It was first spoken in Greece and was also once spoken along the coast of Asia Minor (now a part of Turkey) and in southern Italy. It was also widely used in Western Asia and Northern Africa at one time. In Greek, the language is called Ελληνικά (elliniká).

Greeks write their language using the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet (used to write English and many other languages) came from the Greek alphabet. Many other alphabets around the world also came from the Greek one, such as the Cyrillic alphabet.

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian, which many scholars suggest may have been a dialect of Greek itself, but it is so poorly attested that it is difficult to conclude anything about it. Independently of the Macedonian question, some scholars have grouped Greek into Graeco-Phrygian, as Greek and the extinct Phrygian share features that are not found in other Indo-European languages. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan), but little definitive evidence has been found for grouping the living branches of the family. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian by some linguists. If proven and recognised, the three languages would form a new Balkan sub-branch with other dead European languages.

Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts; they include a large number of Greek toponyms. The form and meaning of many words have evolved. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian, and Turkish. During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from South Slavic (Macedonian/Bulgarian) and Eastern Romance languages (Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian).

Greek Translation Expertise

Modern Greek retains a complex inflectional system with four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, vocative), three genders, and extensive verb conjugation that marks tense, aspect, mood, voice, and person. A major translation challenge is the diglossia legacy — until 1976, official documents used Katharevousa (a formal archaising register), while modern documents use Dimotiki (the vernacular). Translators encountering older Greek documents need competence in both. Greek also uses a formal legal and ecclesiastical vocabulary heavily drawn from Ancient Greek roots that differs significantly from everyday Modern Greek.

Greek uses its own alphabet of 24 letters (alpha to omega), written left-to-right. The modern monotonic system (adopted in 1982) uses only the acute accent (τόνος) to mark stress, replacing the older polytonic system which used three accent types plus breathing marks. Translators must transliterate Greek names consistently — there is no single standard (Giorgos/Georgios, Papadopoulos/Papadopulos), and the spelling used on existing English-language identity documents should be matched.

Common Greek Documents

Greek documents commonly requiring translation include the ληξιαρχική πράξη γέννησης (lixiarkhiki praxi gennisis, birth certificate), πιστοποιητικό οικογενειακής κατάστασης (pistopoiitiko ikogeneiakis katastasis, family status certificate), ποινικό μητρώο (poiniko mitroo, criminal record), and πτυχίο (ptykhio, university degree). Older documents may be in Katharevousa (the formal archaising register used until 1976), requiring specialist knowledge to translate accurately.

NAATI offers certification for Greek translators and interpreters, with one of the larger pools of accredited practitioners in Australia. Greek has historically been among the top languages for NAATI accreditation, reflecting the size and longevity of the Greek-Australian community.

About the Greek Language

Greek has the longest documented history of any living language, with written records spanning over 3,400 years from Mycenaean Greek inscribed in Linear B script around 1450 BC. The Greek alphabet was the first to include vowels as separate letters (adapted from Phoenician around 800 BC), and it became the ancestor of both the Latin alphabet (used by English) and the Cyrillic alphabet (used by Russian). An estimated 30% of English vocabulary derives from Greek roots — words like "democracy," "philosophy," "telephone," "biology," and "catastrophe" are all Greek in origin.