How to say "turn off/on" in Finnish

José asks: 

A good question is how to say TURN ON and TURN OFF.


1. Turn ON the light - Turn OFF the light.

2. Turn ON the cellphone - Turn OFF the cellphone.

3. Turn ON the computer - Turn OFF the computer.

4. Turn ON the television - Turn OFF the television.

5. Turn ON the iron (clothes iron) - Turn OFF the iron

 
Hi José!

Thank you for a great question! 

This blog post is completely based on my own intuition of how to best translate your sentences. In other words, I haven’t done any research for this like I normally do for these blog posts.

I have a strong feeling that researching all of these would lead us down a deep rabbit hole, so I’ve decided to just rely on my own native speaker feel for the Finnish language. This of course means that there’s a bigger risk than usual that other speakers might prefer another version.

Here we go, let’s look at these one at a time!

1. Turn ON the light - Turn OFF the light.

Sytyttää valo – Sammuttaa valo

or

Laittaa valo päälle – Laittaa valo pois päältä.

2. Turn ON the cellphone - Turn OFF the cellphone.

Laittaa puhelin päälle – Laittaa puhelin pois päältä.

With this one, you can use sammuttaa for turn off, so just like turning off the light:

Sammuttaa puhelin.

But sytyttää doesn’t work here, because sytyttää puhelin would mean that you’re lighting your phone on fire, which you obviously want to avoid.

Another verb that you can use for turning on is käynnistää, but it sounds a bit overly formal for everyday use:

Käynnistää puhelin. – To turn on the cellphone.

3. Turn ON the computer - Turn OFF the computer.

Laittaa tietokone päälle. – Laittaa tietokone pois päältä.

Käynnistää tietokone. – Sammuttaa tietokone.

Again, don’t light your computer on fire, avoid the verb sytyttää!

Another option is sulkea ‘to close’ for turning off:

Sulkea tietokone.

For turning on, avata ‘to open’ is also sometimes used, especially if you’re on a laptop:

Avasin tietokoneen aamulla. – I turned my computer on or opened my computer.

4. Turn ON the television - Turn OFF the television.

Laittaa televisio päälle. – Laittaa televisio pois päältä.

Avata televisio. – Sulkea televisio.

For some reason, käynnistää sounds formal to the point of absurdity with televisio, in a way that it doesn’t for computers or phones.

5. Turn ON the iron (clothes iron) - Turn OFF the iron

Laittaa silitysrauta päälle – Laittaa silitysrauta pois päältä.

Here, the other options for turn on and turn off don’t sound correct, but I'm not sure why that is. 
 
If we look at all of the examples above, we can see that laittaa päälle ‘turn on’ and laittaa pois ‘turn off’ work really nicely for all your examples, and I’d say for all electrical appliances in general. At least I can’t immediately think of one where I wouldn’t say laittaa päälle/pois.

Then we have some other options like avata, sulkea, käynnistää, sammuttaa, sytyttää that work in some contexts but not in others. It would be fascinating to look at all of these in more detail to find out why that’s the case, but we’ll leave that for another day!

Readers, can you think of other ways to translate these sentences?

Colleagues and other skilled Finnish speakers reading these: do you agree with my translations? Is there something here that you would express differently? Let me know in the comments!