Verohallintoa monella kielellä – kääntämisen käytänteitä Ruotsin ja Suomen verohallinnon verkkosivuilla

Today tax authorities offer their services on their web pages, and in order to serve international clients the web pages are also partly multilingual. Typically, there is a substantial English version of the pages available in addition to the national language version. In the present article, results from a questionnaire directed to the web editors of Finnish and Swedish tax authorities are reported. The results of the study show that in Finland, all the texts in other languages than Finnish on the web pages are translations made by in-house translators, whereas in Sweden, translation agencies are used. The translated English texts on the web pages are mainly copies of paper versions, and have not been specially adapted for use on the web. The choice of what will be translated and published on the web pages is made based on actuality, but even chance can play a role. All in all, it can be concluded that the translation processes of tax authorities in Finland and Sweden could gain a lot from a more systematic organization and a more explicit translation policy.