About us

Swevi Language Services

Swevi Language Services is owned by the Finnish company Oy Swe-viestintä Ab and provides translation and language services in Swedish, Finnish and English.

Our team

Swevi’s team consists of a managing director, a project manager, two copywriters and over ten freelance translators. Together, we can handle everything from small, individual projects to larger ongoing assignments. If you have a relevant university degree or more than five years’ experience in translation and feel you could be a good fit for our team, click here to get in touch.

Nina Cygnel
account manager, translator
Nina is responsible for keeping projects on track and maintaining linguistic standards. Her hobbies include reading about how languages evolve and are maintained, tracking down Finnishisms and watching Netflix series with her family. She has over 30 years of varied work experience in both the private and public sectors.
Sam Cygnel
Managing director, copywriter, translator
Sam loves to come up with new ideas and take on new linguistic challenges. He is interested in social issues, economics, technology and culture, and enjoys cycling and strumming on the guitar. He previously worked as a journalist and entrepreneur.

History

Company founder Sam Cygnel explains how Swevi became what it is today:
I founded Swe-viestintä in 2015 so that I could invoice for my work as a book editor, journalist and translator. Beyond that, I hoped that the company would one day become a hub for people working with languages. The name Swe-viestintä was aimed at Finnish-speaking organisations in Finland (viestintä = communication).

When my wife Nina joined the business about four years later, we decided to focus more on translations from Finnish to Swedish. Things went well, demand for our services grew steadily and we received a good response from our clients. We hit our first major crossroads a little over a year later, when we also started receiving requests for translations into Finnish and English. As we wanted to stick to our principle of translating only into our mother tongue, Swedish, we had to choose between continuing as before or broadening the company’s expertise by collaborating with other translators. As the latter seemed more interesting, we started by determining exactly what we actually wanted and what felt important to us (equality, participation, transparency, balance). Our key objective was to continue delivering high-quality translations, but in multiple languages. To achieve this, we looked for translators in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom who translate into their mother tongue and who have the same quality standards for their translations as we do. At the same time, we also introduced two-stage proofreading process and acquired project management software to better manage the work process itself. Our new network of skilled and friendly colleagues gradually took shape.

By 2023, there were enough of us and we were sufficiently familiar with each other’s ways of working to be able to translate between the three languages, regardless of language pair or direction. This all meant that, for the first time, we also had to think about the company’s marketing. In doing so, we realised that the name Swe-viestintä was a bit awkward for those living outside Finland and also too narrow as a concept, now that we were also offering services to and from English. Therefore, we registered Swevi Language Services and started using the name in our external communications.