käsittelevät

Käsittelevät is the present active participle of the Finnish verb "käsitellä." In Finnish grammar, participles are verb forms that can function like adjectives, describing a noun by indicating an ongoing or habitual action related to it. The basic meaning of "käsitellä" is "to handle," "to process," "to treat," or "to deal with."

When used attributively, "käsittelevät" directly modifies a noun, meaning "processing" or "handling." For example, "käsittelevät prosessit" translates to "processing processes." More commonly, it appears in relative clauses where it agrees with the subject of the clause. A phrase like "työntekijät, jotka käsittelevät asiakirjoja" can be shortened to "asiakirjoja käsittelevät työntekijät," meaning "the workers who handle the documents" or more concisely, "the document-handling workers."

This participle is highly productive and is a standard feature of formal and technical Finnish. It allows for the creation of compact, descriptive phrases common in administrative, scientific, and technical contexts. For instance, one might encounter terms like "tietoja käsittelevä järjestelmä" (a data-processing system) or "asiakaspalvelua käsittelevä osasto" (a department handling customer service).

Understanding "käsittelevät" and other similar participles is key to reading complex sentences in Finnish, as they streamline expression by combining a relative clause into a single descriptive modifier that precedes the main noun.