Translation Services in Palma (Mallorca)

Alphatrad Palma specialises in translations, interpreting and proofreading services, multilingual transcriptions, voice-over services and subtitling. The company belongs to the Optilingua International Group, which has subsidiaries in 12 European countries, and has over 40 years' experience in translation and linguistic services.

Our committed translation network is the only one of its kind in Europe and it caters to 35,000 customers worldwide. The group has global links with 3,500 professional translators specialising in numerous areas of business, and working in the countries in which the relevant languages are specifically spoken. We also provide services in more than a hundred languages in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Asia, with local translation rates allowing us to offer the most cost-effective service around.

About Palma

Palma is the capital of the island of Mallorca (or Majorca) and also of the Spanish region of the Balearic Islands. The city lies in the western Mediterranean, in the south west of the island of Majorca, about 250 km to the east of the Spanish mainland.

Palma is located in the centre of the bay that shares its name, at an altitude about 13 metres above sea level. With a population of over 400,000, Palma is the eighth largest city in Spain and the largest in the Balearic Islands. It was founded under the name Palma by the Roman consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Balearicus in 123 B.C. After subsequent conquests by the Vandals and Moors in 903, it was finally conquered by King James I of Aragon, later to become the prosperous Ciutat de Mallorca and the capital of its own kingdom, which ended when it was annexed by the crown of Aragon in 1279.

Centuries later, in the 1960s and ’70s, the city would see a huge boom as a popular holiday destination. Today it is a major financial economic and cultural centre for both the island and the region as a whole.

A total of 77,330 foreign residents are recorded in the census, which at 19.5% of the city’s population is a higher proportion than the national average. The city’s foreign residents originate from many different countries and continents, although the German, Bulgarian, Italian, Moroccan, Argentinean, Bolivian and Colombian communities are the largest.

The two main driving forces of the local economy are tourism and construction, followed by industry and the primary sector (farming, fisheries and mining). The local hotel industries are among the most significant in Spain and even the world. The areas where the largest numbers of tourists are to be found are Playa de Palma and the city centre.

In Palma’s services sector, commercial distribution is particularly strong. Education, with the university as its flagship, is research-oriented. Healthcare facilities, particularly those provided at the local hospitals, meet the needs of the population of the metropolitan area, and the tourism sector includes an extensive network of hotels and restaurants of all sizes and categories. The city also has a large number of branches of all Spain’s leading banks.

Tourism is the main economic activity in Majorca as a whole and the city of Palma is no exception. Indeed, the whole regional economy depends directly or indirectly on tourism in the largest of the Balearic Islands. The predominant type of tourism found here is “sun and sand”, thanks to the appeal of the island’s many beaches and Mediterranean climate.

The official languages in Palma, as in the rest of the Balearic Islands region, are Catalan and Castilian Spanish. The most striking features of the Majorca dialect of Catalan (mallorquín) are the neutralisation of tonic a and e into [ə], and the use of the articles es, sa and ses instead of el, la, els and les. Because of the importance of tourism, many local people speak several European languages, mostly English and German and, to a lesser extent, Swedish, Norwegian and Italian.