Svenska Lottakåren – a piece of the puzzle in Sweden's defence, and a way into society for newly arrived women

”For us, it was important to find a partner who had experience from our industry to ensure that the terminology is correct. Språkbolaget has held our hand throughout the entire process and delivered quality in a short space of time. Now we look forward to being able to reach out to new target audiences. ”
Maria Öst, Communications Officer, Swedish Women's Voluntary Defence Service

The Women's Voluntary Defence Service is an important part of Sweden's total defence. The organisation was formed in 1924 and recently turned 100 years old. The Women's Voluntary Defence Service organises women across a wide age range who want to make a contribution to the defence – and the tasks are numerous.

Total defence involves everyone who lives in Sweden, regardless of citizenship and background, and in today's uncertain global situation with many conflict zones and the war in Ukraine not far from our borders, the Women's Voluntary Defence Service is more relevant than ever.

The Women's Voluntary Defence Service wants to broaden its recruitment and has therefore chosen to translate parts of its information material into Arabic, Somali and English. Arabic is currently Sweden's second most spoken language, Somali is growing rapidly and English is a common language for many groups. Many women with Arabic and Somali as their mother tongue have a strong drive to contribute to their new homeland, and the Swedish Women's Voluntary Defence Service can act as an important channel for them to become integrated into society and learn Swedish more quickly.

We turn to Maria Öst, communications officer at the Women's Voluntary Defence Service:

Tell us a little about the Women's Voluntary Defence Service (Svenska Lottakåren) and who you are

– The Women's Voluntary Defence Service is a voluntary defence organisation that brings together women in a strong community that helps to strengthen the country's resilience, says Maria Öst. We inform, educate and train to strengthen you and society in everyday life, crisis and war. As a member, you gain knowledge and an opportunity to contribute to your local community or our national preparedness. We work to strengthen our fundamental democratic values through school activities, corps activities, study circles and our podcast Lottapodden. We believe that if you understand your freedoms and rights, you also want to be involved in defending them. Not necessarily with weapons, but by actively contributing to the entire total defence. We turned 100 in 2024 and are now building towards the future in the troubled world in which we live.  

How did you think about translation, and what do you hope to achieve by translating?

– Now that the world around us is unsettled, we see that in our mission to spread knowledge about total defence we also need to reach out to target groups that do not have Swedish as their first language, and the translation of our basic brochure became a first step, replies Maria Öst. Now we can better meet new target groups when we are out at fairs and similar events.

What was important to you when choosing a translation partner?

– In the end, you were the only ones who kept the dialogue going, and from the very first contact it felt secure and professional, says Maria Öst. Since we are in the defence sector, it was also important for us to work with a supplier that had experience in our field.

Translating Swedish texts into Arabic and Somali is a small but rapidly growing part of the Swedish language industry. The task has its specific challenges, it is poorly suited to AI, and it is vital to know which translators know their stuff. For the Swedish Women's Voluntary Defence Service (Svenska Lottakåren), it was not entirely straightforward to find a supplier, and Språkbolaget was ultimately the only agency prepared to take on the assignment. We ask Monia Ly, project manager at Språkbolaget:

What was the specific assignment?

Specifically, it was a matter of translating the leaflet Become a member of the Lottas and various other informational materials into Arabic, Somali, and British English, summarises Monia Ly. Translating into English is straightforward, but Arabic and Somali are a completely different story. The languages have many first-language speakers in Sweden – many more than, for example, English. At the same time, it is difficult to find skilled translators for those languages. One of Språkbolaget's most important contributions to the project was knowing where the right talents are to be found.

What did the work process look like?

– To begin with as a conventional translation assignment, says Monia Ly. Naturally, we only use native-speaking translators with documented competence, and as an extra quality assurance measure, the texts are also reviewed by an additional translator. The customer took care of the layout and design in English and Somali themselves – which is largely a matter of inserting the translation into the existing layout. However, Språkbolaget was entrusted with the layout of the translations into Arabic, and there is a vast amount that can go wrong here.

What are the problems that can arise?

– Somali is written with the Latin alphabet from left to right and is straightforward in that way, says Monia Ly. But the written language is relatively new and terms are lacking for many phenomena – translators and reviewers can be given the task of establishing new terms.

– Arabic has a richer vocabulary and a well-established common written language, but is written from right to left, continues Monia Ly. All numerical values, on the other hand, from left to right. Printed publications are read from what we usually call the last page to the first. Therefore, it is not enough to change the text direction, but the entire layout has to be rearranged to preserve the logic. Within the framework of a project like this, the text passes through many computers, and it is extremely important that all computers involved have the correct fonts and language support installed. Otherwise, errors can occur that are impossible to spot for someone who does not know Arabic, but which make the result totally incomprehensible.

What role does the project manager play?

– When it comes to migrant languages and when many steps are involved, you need to keep absolute track of where you are in the process, Monia Ly stresses. As I said, a lot can go wrong, the errors are difficult to spot and they escalate quickly if you don't deal with them straight away.

– The process has been very clear from your side, and that is appreciated, chimes in Maria Öst.

– One of the project manager's most important contributions to a project like this is perhaps precisely the personal contact with both the client, and the translators and reviewers, points out Monia Ly. We at Språkbolaget know where we have our suppliers, we know them personally and we know what they are capable of.

What impressions and experiences has the project provided?

– An important insight, which we already had but which the project has underlined, is that AI is nowhere near sufficient when working with low-resource languages – i.e. languages without large language models, such as Swedish to Somali and Swedish to Arabic, says Maria Lachonius, founder and CEO of Språkbolaget. AI can certainly provide a general idea of what a text is about, but it stops there.

– But there is another aspect of the project that appeals to us, continues Maria Lachonius. Språkbolaget has an exclusively female staff. That is not an end in itself, but that is how it has turned out. Therefore, it feels extra nice to do a project for a women's organisation like the Swedish Women's Voluntary Defence Service, and moreover a project aimed at women who want to enter Swedish society and contribute to it.

How did it turn out?

– It has been very straightforward and the end result looks great, says Maria Öst. Now it will be fun to start using the brochures and see what results it brings.

For us, it was important to find a partner who had experience from our industry to ensure that the terminology is correct. Språkbolaget has held our hand throughout the entire process and delivered quality in a short space of time. Now we look forward to being able to reach out to new target audiences.