🗣️ Translating from English

This manual is about reading English as a source: what a translator must notice in an English text before writing a word of the target. English hides a great deal: gender, formality, aspect, the relations inside noun chains, the sense of a light verb or a phrasal verb. The target languages of this folder, French and Ukrainian, must say most of it. Writing English as a target is in Translating into English; the pair manuals English and French: the pair manual and English and Ukrainian: the pair manual go construction by construction. The grammar of English itself is in the English manual.

1. Principles for an English source

1. Read the whole text first. English leaves many choices open until late: the gender of the doctor may appear three paragraphs on; you may turn out to be a child; it may refer back a page. A translator who starts at sentence one into a language that forces those choices will have to go back.
2. List what English did not say and the target must. For every text, before drafting: the genders of people referred to by role; the formality of every you; which pasts are completed events and which are background; which noun phrases are definite.
3. Find the register from more than vocabulary. English marks register by contractions, phrasal verbs against Latinate verbs, sentence length, the passive, shall and one. A text with commence, endeavour and in respect of is official whatever it is about.
4. Do not let English word order dictate the target's. English order is grammar; in Ukrainian order is information, and in French the noun phrase is built the other way round.

2. Meaning before form: where English hides meaning

2.1 Light verbs and broad verbs

English uses a small set of very frequent verbs with very broad meanings: get, make, take, have, do, put, go, come, give. Their sense comes from the object or particle, and each sense has a different target verb:

The rule is never to translate the light verb: translate the phrase.

2.2 Phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb (give up, put off, run into, turn down) is a single lexical unit, often with several senses, and usually more colloquial than its Latinate synonym (give up / abandon, put off / postpone). Three things to check:

1. Which sense. Put off is "postpone" (put off the meeting), "repel" (the smell put me off), "distract".
2. The register. The phrasal verb is usually the neutral-to-colloquial choice. French and Ukrainian render it with a single verb whose register is neutral: I gave up smoking six months ago → J'ai arrêté de fumer il y a six mois (tatoeba:262293-181292) → Я кинув палити пів року тому. The Ukrainian кинути is the exact colloquial match; відмовився від паління is the formal one.
3. Separable particles. Turn it down, turn the radio down: the particle may stand far from the verb, and a parser may miss it. Read the particle back to the verb before translating.

2.3 Noun chains

English stacks nouns as modifiers (road safety awareness campaign; crude oil production statistics). The relations between the nouns are not marked, and the bracketing is ambiguous. The EU's English style guide gives the case of crude oil production statistics, where only a hyphen (crude-oil) tells the reader that crude goes with oil rather than with statistics (commission-1982). French and Ukrainian must spell the relations out with prepositions or cases, so the translator must decide them:

• road safety awareness campaign = a campaign (for raising) awareness (of) safety (on) roads → campagne de sensibilisation à la sécurité routière → кампанія з підвищення обізнаності про безпеку на дорогах.
• child protection law → loi sur la protection de l'enfance / закон про захист дітей; child labour law is a law against child labour, not one protecting child labour.

When the bracketing cannot be decided from context, ask; do not guess silently.

2.4 Polysemy and the English everyday words

High-frequency English words are polysemous in ways French and Ukrainian divide: right (correct, on the right, a right, just now: right now), fair, still, even, issue (problem, question, edition, emission), case (instance, lawsuit, box, grammatical case), address (a postal address, a speech, "deal with": address the problem → traiter le problème, розв'язати проблему; the calque adresser le problème is an error in French, see Translating into French).

2.5 Implicature, understatement and politeness

English, and especially British English, says less than it means:

• Not bad often means "good"; quite good in British English can mean "fairly good, not very"; I'm not sure that's a good idea means "no".
• Would you mind …?, Could you possibly …?, I was wondering if … are requests. Their target is a polite request in the target's own form (Pourriez-vous …, Чи не могли б ви …), not a literal question about minding or wondering.
• With respect, I hear what you say can be openly disagreeing.

The translation keeps the force (a request, a refusal, a criticism) and the degree of politeness, by the target's means. A literal Ça vous dérangerait de … is correct French for Would you mind …; Я хотів би запитати, чи … is heavier than its English source.

3. Register and style in an English source

3.1 Signals of register

3.2 You

English you is singular or plural, formal or informal, specific or generic. The target must decide each:

• Specific or generic. You never know (generic) → On ne sait jamais → Ніколи не знаєш (Ukrainian uses the 2nd singular for the generic person too), or Хтозна. A generic you rendered by a specific vous changes who is talked about.
• Singular or plural. Context only; in instructions it is usually plural or impersonal (Appuyez …, Натисніть …).
• Formal or informal. §3.3 of the general manual. You should have listened to me is Tu aurais dû m'écouter in Tatoeba (tatoeba:1726-3546) because the sentence's tone suggests intimacy; with a stranger it would be Vous auriez dû ….

3.3 Singular they and gender

English has no gender outside the third-person pronouns and a few nouns, and it uses singular they for a person of unknown or unstated gender and for people who use it: Someone left their umbrella in the hall. French renders it with the possessive, which agrees with the thing possessed, not the owner: Quelqu'un a laissé son parapluie dans le couloir (tatoeba:722023-2158933); Ukrainian has the reflexive possessive свій, which is also gender-free: Хтось залишив свою парасольку в коридорі. The trouble comes later, with the past tense and adjectives, which in both languages agree: Someone left. They were tired → Quelqu'un est parti. Il était fatigué (default masculine) or a restructuring; Хтось пішов. Він/вона був(ла) втомлений(а). The translator chooses between:

1. the target's grammatical default (masculine), which is still standard in both languages for an unknown person;
2. a restructuring that avoids agreement (Quelqu'un est parti, épuisé still agrees; Quelqu'un est parti : la fatigue … does not);
3. the target's inclusive forms where the house style uses them (French iel, the point médian; Ukrainian has no settled neutral pronoun).

Role nouns are the larger case. English the nurse, the doctor, the teacher, my cousin, the minister carry no gender, and a translation must give one. Tatoeba shows the default the translators reached for: The nurse gave me a shot → L'infirmière me fit une piqure (tatoeba:20973-1597817): the nurse became a woman, and nothing in the English said so. Europarl shows the reverse: I too would like to congratulate the rapporteur on her excellent work → je voudrais également féliciter le rapporteur pour son excellent travail (europarl-v8:465): English said the rapporteur was a woman; the French institutional form le rapporteur and the gender-free son lost it. Rules:

• Look for the gender in the text (a later pronoun, a name, a photo caption) before choosing.
• When it is known, show it, with the target's feminine where usage supports it (la rapporteure is now usual in French institutions; Ukrainian доповідачка).
• When it is unknown, follow the brief's house style; without one, the target's default, and never a stereotype in place of evidence.

3.4 British and American sources

Know which English the source is in; some words differ in meaning, not only in spelling:

4. Terminology in English sources

• Defined terms. Legal and technical English defines terms with capitals (the Licensee, the Product). Keep a list and render each once, consistently.
• English as a lingua franca. Much English is written by non-native writers (EU drafts, international organisations, research papers). Its terms may be calques from the writer's language; the EU style guide lists French–English interference spellings such as adresse → address, exemple → example (commission-1982). Before translating a strange English term, ask what the writer's first language would call it.
• Anglicism pressure. The target language may already have borrowed the English term. Whether to use the borrowing is decided by measured usage in the target's register (general manual §4.3), not by its resemblance to the source.

5. False friends out of English

The lists by pair are in the pair manuals. The most frequent from English into French and Ukrainian:

In Europarl v8, eventually (1 305 English sentences) is rendered finalement in 367 and éventuellement in 35 (counted 2026-11-06); some of the 35 are true errors, others co-occurrences (general manual §5).

5.1 The pair lists and the most frequent traps

The full lists, both directions, by domain and measured in the parallel corpora, are False friends: English and French and English and Ukrainian: false friends; the renderings of English words that depend on context are in English and French: renderings by context and English and Ukrainian: renderings by context. The English source words that the corpora meet most often among the listed traps (counted 2026-11-06; English–French counts are dominated by Europarl and DGT, English–Ukrainian by Tatoeba): into French, regulation (an EU act is règlement), implement (mettre en œuvre), support (soutenir, not supporter), provision (disposition), application (demande, candidature), policy (politique), control (maîtriser outside EU terms), issue (question, problème), relevant (pertinent, compétent), people (personnes, gens); into Ukrainian, any (✗ любий through Russian любой; ✓ будь-який), be as a copula (✗ являтися), help (допомагати кому, dative), right, correct (правильний; вірний is "faithful" in careful style), city (✗ город, a garden plot; ✓ місто), money (plural гроші), consider (✗ рахувати, "count"; ✓ вважати).

6. Grammar transfer from English

6.1 Tense and aspect

• The present perfect (I have lived here for ten years) is a state still true: French and Ukrainian use the present with depuis / вже … років: J'habite ici depuis dix ans, Я живу тут уже десять років. Tatoeba: I've been waiting for hours → J'attends depuis des heures (tatoeba:2314-4169) or Ça fait des heures que j'attends (tatoeba:2314-1533585). A past rendering (✗ J'ai habité ici pendant dix ans) says the speaker has left.
• The progressive marks an ongoing or temporary action; it has no French or Ukrainian form. In Ukrainian it maps to the imperfective aspect; in French to the present or imperfect, with être en train de when the ongoing action is the point.
• The simple past covers both completed events and states or habits in the past. French splits it into passé composé or passé simple (events) and imperfect (background, habit, state); Ukrainian into perfective (completed) and imperfective (process, habit). When I was a child, I read a lot → Enfant, je lisais beaucoup → У дитинстві я багато читав (imperfective). I read the letter and left → J'ai lu la lettre et je suis parti → Я прочитав листа й пішов (perfective).
• Just with a past or perfect is the recent past: I just arrived → Je viens d'arriver (tatoeba:257520-6531) → Я щойно приїхав.
• Will and going to are both future; will is also willingness (He won't open the door = refuses) and habit (She'll sit there for hours).

6.2 Modals

English modals are ambiguous between kinds of modality:

6.3 The passive

English uses the passive in neutral prose to keep the topic first or to omit the agent. French and Ukrainian use it less, and Ukrainian's passive with an agent in the instrumental is heard as bureaucratic. Before translating a passive, ask: is the agent stated? Is it the topic that is first, or the event? Then choose the target's means (on, a pronominal verb, an active, the Ukrainian -но/-то form or third-person plural). See Translating into French and Translating into Ukrainian.

6.4 Articles and definiteness

The English article is information: a man came in introduces someone new; the man came in refers back. French keeps the information in its own articles (with differences: generic the is les and generic plurals take les; I like coffee → J'aime le café). Ukrainian has no articles and moves the information into word order (the new last), demonstratives or один ("a certain"): A man came into the room → До кімнати зайшов чоловік; The man came into the room → Чоловік зайшов до кімнати.

6.5 -ing forms

The English -ing form is a participle, a gerund or a verbal noun, and it attaches loosely: Walking home, the rain started is a dangling participle the writer did not intend. Decide what each -ing is and whose action it is before translating; French has the gérondif (en marchant) and the present participle; Ukrainian has the дієприслівник (ідучи), which must share its subject with the main verb.

6.6 Ellipsis and pro-forms

English uses do so, one, that of, VP ellipsis (She can swim and so can I), and tags (You're coming, aren't you?). Each needs the target's own means: Elle sait nager, et moi aussi; Вона вміє плавати, і я теж; tags become n'est-ce pas ?, hein ?, так?, правда ж? according to register.

7. Idioms, culture-bound items and songs

• Idioms are translated by equivalent idioms, paraphrase or, rarely, literally (general manual §7.1). English idioms that look transparent are the most dangerous: go out of one's way ("take trouble") rendered literally is a calque; вийшов зі свого шляху is listed among the errors of a WMT 2025 English–Ukrainian system (grozea-2025).
• Sport and money idioms are frequent in English and culture-bound: a level playing field, move the goalposts, ballpark figure, step up to the plate, a quid pro quo. They usually become plain paraphrase or a target idiom of another image.
• Realia: the school system (sixth form, high school, college, which is not a French collège), the political system (the Speaker, the Senate), food, holidays. General manual §7.2.
• Songs: English lyrics depart from written grammar as a matter of course: ain't, double negatives (I can't get no …), me and him went, dropped subjects (Ø Woke up this morning), dropped auxiliaries (Ø You ever been …?), -in' spellings, rhyme-driven order. These are marks of the song register, not errors to be corrected: the translation keeps the register with the target's own song grammar (general manual §9.3). A double negative in English is non-standard; in Ukrainian negative concord (ніхто нічого не знає) is standard, so the colloquial mark must be carried by something else.

8. Names, numbers, dates and typography in English sources

• Names: keep personal names; check whether a place name has a target exonym (London → Londres, Лондон); render institutional names by their established target form if one exists.
• Numbers: English decimal point and thousands comma (1,234.5) become 1 234,5 in French and Ukrainian. Check billion (§3.4).
• Units: imperial and US units (miles, pounds, Fahrenheit, fluid ounces, which differ between the UK and the US) are converted only if the brief says so.
• Dates: decide British or American order before converting a numeric date.
• Capitals: English capitalises nationality adjectives, languages, days and months, and title words; French and Ukrainian do not (French → français, французький; Monday → lundi, понеділок).
• Quotation marks become the target's (general manual §8.3).

9. Quality checks for translations out of English

Add to the general checklist:

1. Every you has a decided number, formality and genericity, consistent across the text.
2. Every person referred to by role has a gender supported by the text or the brief, not by a stereotype.
3. Every English simple past has the right French tense or Ukrainian aspect; every present perfect of a continuing state is a target present.
4. Every noun chain's bracketing was decided, not guessed.
5. No phrasal verb, light verb or noun chain was translated part by part.
6. Imperial units, billion, numeric dates and the floors of a building were checked for the source's variety.

Typical MQM-like labels (general manual §11.1): accuracy / mistranslation / false friend (actually → actuellement); accuracy / mistranslation / wrong tense (present perfect → past); style / unidiomatic (calqued phrasal verb); audience appropriateness (gender stereotype); locale conventions (decimal point kept).

10. Worked examples: one English sentence, several translations

Tatoeba keeps several translations of one English sentence, each by a named contributor, in French and in Ukrainian. Read side by side, they show exactly which choices English leaves open. (Examples from tatoeba and en-uk/tatoeba/; the direction of a Tatoeba link is not recorded, but these English sentences have the lower ids and were written first.)

10.1 Do you speak English / French?: formality and the verb

English speak covers ability and habit; French parler and savoir parler, Ukrainian говорити (or розмовляти) and знати divide them. The English sentence fixes neither formality nor register; each translation fixes both.

10.2 I just arrived now: gender and means of travel

Ukrainian forces two facts English left open: the speaker's gender (in the past verb) and the means of motion (on foot прийти, by vehicle приїхати, by air прилетіти). The translator must find them in the context; a sentence in isolation, as in Tatoeba, gets several correct translations.

10.3 I miss you: the roles

10.4 I read the book: an English homograph

Read is present or past; the English sentence alone does not say which. Tatoeba has both readings: Я прочитав книгу (past perfective, tatoeba:989164-1567040) and Я читаю книжку (present, tatoeba:989164-6388023). In a text the context decides; a translator who does not notice the homograph will choose silently. Other English homographs of this kind: put, cut, set, hit, let, shut, cost, hurt (present and past alike), and the noun/verb pairs record, present, object, contract (stress differs, spelling does not).

10.5 I have a car: register in the possessive

У мене є машина (tatoeba:252272-5948717), Я маю машину (tatoeba:252272-5957990) and Я маю автівку (tatoeba:252272-735595): the first is the neutral spoken construction, the second more formal or western, the third with the colloquial, recently revived автівка for "car". All are correct; the register coordinate (general manual §3.1) chooses.

10.6 You should have …: modality

You should have told him the truth → Ти повинен був сказати йому правду (tatoeba:15827-492594); You should have attended the meeting → Ти мусив би відвідати зустріч (tatoeba:16240-471597); You should have visited Kyoto → Тобі треба було відвідати Кіото (tatoeba:51297-471177). Three Ukrainian constructions for one English one: obligation in the past (повинен був), a conditional of necessity (мусив би), an impersonal of need (треба було). The last is the most colloquial and the most common in speech; the first carries a masculine you (повинна була for a woman), which the English did not say.

10.7 The nurse: a default gender

The nurse looked after the babies → Медсестра доглядала за немовлятами (tatoeba:20972-505561); French Tatoeba likewise has L'infirmière (tatoeba:20973-1597817). Both translators gave the nurse a feminine noun on no evidence. In a text where the nurse is a man, медбрат and l'infirmier are required; in a text where nothing is said, the house style decides (§3.3).

10.8 Where is the library?: a contested verb

Де бібліотека? (tatoeba:270700-4591572) and Де знаходиться бібліотека? (tatoeba:270700-4591573). The second uses знаходитися "be located", which purist guides criticise as a russianism in this sense (native: бути, розташовуватися, or nothing); it is very common. The zero copula of the first is the safest Ukrainian.

10.9 He put his hand on my shoulder: possessives

Він поклав руку мені не плече (tatoeba:2439719-384384) drops his and turns my into the dative мені ("put the hand to me on the shoulder"), the native construction for body parts. The corpus sentence also has a typo (не for на): corpora are evidence of usage, not proofread texts. He put his hands in his pockets → Він поклав руки собі у кишені (tatoeba:292724-651746) uses the dative reflexive собі in the same way.

10.10 A man came up to me: order

A man came up to me and asked for a match → Чоловік підійшов до мене і попросив сірник (tatoeba:27625-1565865). The Ukrainian keeps the English order, which is grammatical but reads the man as given; До мене підійшов чоловік і попросив сірника puts the new subject last and uses the partitive genitive сірника ("a match, some match"). Both are attested Ukrainian; the second is closer to the English a man.

11. Ambiguities of English to resolve before translating

English's few endings and loose attachment leave ambiguities that French and Ukrainian cannot keep. List and resolve them in the first reading:

12. English sources by domain

• IT and software. English interface terms are often verbs used as nouns (a download, an update, a log-in) and nouns used as verbs (to text, to google). French and Ukrainian need a proper noun or verb: un téléchargement, une mise à jour, une connexion; завантаження, оновлення, вхід. Read each as its class in the sentence before choosing.
• Science. English scientific prose prefers the passive and we (We show that …); French uses nous or on; Ukrainian uses the first person plural with a dropped subject (Показано, що …, Ми показуємо, що …) or the -но/-то form.
• Medicine. English clinical abbreviations (b.i.d., p.o., MI, BP) are expanded or replaced by the target's (deux fois par jour, per os, IDM, TA; двічі на день, перорально, ІМ, АТ). A missed abbreviation in a dosage is a critical error.
• Law (common law). English legal terms of the common law (tort, trust, equity, consideration, barrister, solicitor) have no civil-law equivalents in French or Ukrainian law: describe or keep (general manual §12.3). EU English (Member State, shall, recital) has fixed French equivalents in the DGT memory and established Ukrainian ones in the translations of the EU acquis (держава-член, преамбула).
• Business and marketing. English marketing copy is dense with borrowable buzzwords (engagement, insights, leverage, seamless); judge every borrowing by the target market's usage (§4.3 of the general manual), and render the persuasive force rather than the words.

13. Reading non-standard English sources

A non-standard English source is the standard plus deltas (general manual §3.7 and §13.1). Read the deltas for their function before translating:

• African American English and rap use zero copula (she Ø fine), habitual be (he be working: "he regularly works"), ain't, double negation, finna ("about to"). Habitual be carries a meaning the target must keep (a habit, not a present event): Il bosse tout le temps; Він постійно працює. The variety's social meaning is not mapped to a target dialect (§3.5).
• Scots and Irish English: dinnae, wee, ken; the Irish after perfect (I'm after eating = "I have just eaten") → Je viens de manger, Я щойно поїв.
• Early Modern and biblical English: thou is singular and intimate (or divine address), not formal: KJV thou → French tu, Ukrainian ти (bible-kjv-lsg:EXO_20:13 Tu ne tueras point; Kulish Не вбивати меш, bible-kjv-kulish:EXO_20:13). Want means "lack" (I shall not want, bible-kjv-kulish:PSA_23:1: Kulish не мати му недостатку).
• Internet English: abbreviations (lol, tbh, imo), lowercase, emoji, irony markers (/s). They are a register: the targets have their own (mdr, ptdr in French; лол, хз, імхо in Ukrainian).

14. Institutional English and its idioms: the Europarl evidence

Parliamentary and EU English is full of idioms and buzzwords that look transparent. Europarl v8 shows how its French translators rendered some of them (English side matched, French side counted; a sentence may hold several renderings or none of those listed; counted 2026-11-06; the direction of each sentence is not recorded):

The literal at the end of the day shows the decision. In europarl-v8:978215, may we come out safely at the end of the day is about Hungarian miners coming up from the pit, and sortir sains et saufs à la fin de la journée is right: a real working day. In europarl-v8:438461, If, at the end of the day, we cannot get an agreement … about a vote set for 9 April is the idiom ("in the end"), and Si, à la fin de la journée, nous ne sommes pas parvenus à un accord is a mistranslation that a careful reader may still decode. In europarl-v8:272096, Otherwise, at the end of the day, our agenda would be totally out of place is ambiguous (the day's agenda), and the literal rendering may be right. Only context decides; a counter of renderings cannot.

Into Ukrainian, the same idioms have the same problem: address the issue → розв'язати, вирішити, розглянути, порушити питання (by what is done; адресувати проблему is a calque); level playing field → рівні умови (конкуренції); at the end of the day → зрештою, урешті-решт, кінець кінцем; stakeholders → зацікавлені сторони; empowerment → розширення прав і можливостей (the term of development agencies), or a paraphrase.

15. How Mova handles it

Today.

• Mova reads English with its own stack: tokens, Universal Dependencies tree and PTB tags, frames and world (English manual; register in en 37, multiword expressions in en 19). Phrasal verbs, noun compounds and modals are parsed as the English manual describes; the forced choices of a target language (gender of a role noun, tu/vous, aspect) are not computed, because Mova has no French or Ukrainian generation.
• tools/translate translates from English only into other English: between Bible editions (JPS 1917, KJV, WEB, ASV and the other eBible editions with translate many) and into Hebrew site pages (heb_enc.rs). Its interlingua lexicon learns which English words and phrases are one concept across editions (it came to pass and it happened are one concept, come_to_pass; thou, ye and you are one concept), and its function-word tables swap what a target edition never writes (unto → to, thee → you) for trained pairs. This is the English-internal form of §2: one meaning, several forms, chosen per author.
• Register is modelled per author delta: the school's plain, conversational (half-slang) and exam styles have their own deltas over the standard English encoder. This is the closest Mova has to reading the register of an English source.
• The logic layer counts contradictions (negation, modality, names in roles, numbers) and reversals between two English readings of the same event, the critical accuracy checks of §9.

Planned and being built. The English Nightingale 🐦 (tools/nightingale, being built) would measure naturalness against the English Wikipedia, which Mova already holds; for translation out of English, its role is on the target side, so the French and Ukrainian Nightingales matter more here (see Translating into French, Translating into Ukrainian). The Eel's rounds tr-en-fr and tr-en-uk (being built) would train and measure those directions; only English–French has parallel data today.

Where Mova stops. No gender, formality or aspect decision for a target language; no false-friend list; no noun-chain bracketing beyond the parser's attachment; no song register.

Sources

(commission-1982) (EU English Style Guide, interference and hyphenation); (grozea-2025) (calques in English–Ukrainian MT); the general manual's sources. Corpus examples: Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR; authors in each row's provenance), Europarl v8. Counts made 2026-11-06 on pairs.tsv; English–Ukrainian Tatoeba examples from pairs.tsv (CC BY 2.0 FR), the Kulish/Puluj Bible (1905, public domain) from en-uk/bible/.

The Elamur team

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/from-en/