🗣️ Translating into English

This manual is about writing English as a target: what an English text translated from French or Ukrainian must look like to read as English. Its main enemies are the source's word order, its nominal style, its tense system carried over unchanged, and the articles Ukrainian does not have. Reading English as a source is in Translating from English; the contrasts pair by pair are in English and French: the pair manual and English and Ukrainian: the pair manual. The grammar of English is in the English manual.

1. Principles for an English target

1. Choose the variety first. British, American, Irish, Australian, Indian or EU institutional English differ in spelling, vocabulary, punctuation and date order. The brief chooses; without one, follow the client's market. Mixing varieties inside a text is an error of locale conventions.
2. Write English, not the source in English words. English prefers verbs to nouns, the agent as subject, the short Germanic word in neutral prose, end weight (the long or new element last), and explicit articles. A translation that keeps the source's nominal chains and word order reads as translationese even when every sentence is grammatical.
3. Keep the register by English means. Contractions, phrasal verbs and short sentences carry colloquial register in English; shall, Latinate verbs and defined terms carry legal register. A French or Ukrainian source marks register otherwise, and the translator must re-mark it.
4. Plain where the source is plain. English has a strong plain-language tradition in public texts. A translator into English for the public should not make the text more formal than the source, and may make it plainer when the brief allows.

2. Meaning before form in an English target

2.1 Verbs over nouns

French and Ukrainian official prose builds on verbal nouns (la mise en œuvre de, la prise en compte de; здійснення, забезпечення, проведення). Rendered noun for noun, it gives the carrying out of the implementation of; English prefers a verb:

2.2 End weight and given before new

English puts the given first and the new or heavy last, using the passive, there is, clefts and extraposition to do so. Ukrainian does the same by free word order; French by dislocation and clefts. Into English:

• A Ukrainian sentence with the new subject last (До кімнати зайшов чоловік) needs an English indefinite subject (A man came into the room) or there (There came a man, archaic); not ✗ Into the room came a man unless the style is literary.
• A heavy subject is moved back with it: Que le projet ait échoué n'étonne personne → It surprises no one that the project failed.

2.3 Speech verbs and dialogue

French narrative varies its speech verbs (fit, s'écria, répliqua, reprit) and Ukrainian uses many (мовив, озвався, гукнув); English prose prefers said in most places and a few chosen others, with the manner in an adverb or phrase. The Gutenberg Around the World in Eighty Days (French original, English translation of 1873) shows the old translator's practice: «Ah!» fit Mr. Fogg, sans manifester aucun étonnement → “Ah!” said Mr. Fogg, without betraying any astonishment (gut-verne-80-days:1340). The French fit became said; manifester became the idiomatic betray.

2.4 Restructure when the source's construction is not English

From the same book: Passepartout, qui était présent, eût volontiers embrassé le pilote, auquel Fix aurait voulu tordre le cou → Passepartout, who heard what passed, would willingly have embraced the pilot, while Fix would have been glad to twist his neck (gut-verne-80-days:1341). The French relative auquel (a dative relative) is not an English construction; the translator made it a contrast clause with while. From Maupassant's Pierre et Jean: Mme Roland … rose de bonheur, le regard brillant, elle contemplait son fils Jean → Mme. Roland … was gazing at her son Jean with sparkling eyes; happiness had brought a colour to her cheeks (gut-maupassant-pierre-jean:699): the French adjective phrase rose de bonheur became a full English clause, the transposition of general manual §2.2.

3. Register and style in an English target

3.1 Colloquial English

A colloquial source becomes colloquial English: contractions, phrasal verbs, short sentences, tags, colloquial vocabulary. From Verne: «Farceur!» répondit Passepartout → “You're a sly dog!” said Passepartout (gut-verne-80-days:1261). One French word became a whole English idiom of the period; a modern rendering would be “You joker!” or “Get away with you!”. Note that tu and vous are lost: pour toi in Cela est peut-être, cependant, plus dangereux pour toi becomes for you (gut-maupassant-pierre-jean:720); the intimacy between the brothers must be carried by tone.

3.2 Official and legal English

EU legal English follows explicit rules in the Commission's style guide (commission-1982):

• Obligation: shall. The following products shall be clearly labelled. In EU usage shall means must; most English-speaking countries now use must in their own legislation, and a translator of non-EU legislation may do so, consistently.
• Prohibition: shall not. Never may not, which can be read as possibility.
• Permission: may.
• French legislative drafting expresses obligation by the present indicative (le taux ne dépasse pas), and Ukrainian by the present (Рада ухвалює) or modal words (зобов'язаний, повинен, має); in an EU English target they become shall. DGT shows it: During this transitional period the sulphur content shall not exceed 3,00 % by mass / Pendant cette période transitoire, la teneur en soufre ne dépasse pas 3,00 % en masse (dgt-tm-v2021:1385; the direction is not recorded, and the English keeps a French-style decimal comma, which the style guide would write 3.00%).
• Citation of subdivisions: Article 3(1), not art. 3 §1; the French paragraphe is a numbered paragraph, alinéa an unnumbered subparagraph (commission-1982).

3.3 Inclusive language

English avoids gender where it can: singular they, gender-neutral role nouns (chair, spokesperson, firefighter), plurals. A French or Ukrainian source with a generic masculine (le candidat doit …, кандидат повинен …) becomes neutral English (candidates must …, the candidate … they), unless the masculine was specific.

3.4 House style

The EU English style guide's points most often violated by translators (commission-1982):

• spelling: British, -ise (organise); first spelling of the Oxford dictionaries otherwise;
• numbers: one to nine in words, 10 and above in figures; 9 to 11, not nine to 11; hard space as thousands separator (15 000);
• percentages: 25% closed up; per cent in words with spelled-out numbers;
• currency: EUR 2 400 or €2 400;
• dates: 6 June 2016; OJ references in short form 6.6.2016;
• quotation marks: single curly first, double inside;
• footnote references before punctuation.

A US house style differs on most of these (organize, 15,000, June 6, 2016, double quotation marks, commas and full stops inside quotation marks).

4. Terminology in an English target

• Use the English name the institution uses for itself (the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Conseil d'État (often untranslated) or the Council of State). Check its own English pages.
• French institutional words have EU English equivalents that are not their look-alikes: rapporteur stays rapporteur; commission in the French parliament is a committee; proposition de loi is a private member's bill or bill; arrêté is an order or decision.
• Ukrainian legal and administrative words: постанова is a resolution (of the Cabinet or the Rada) or a ruling (of a court); наказ an order; розпорядження an instruction or order; обласна державна адміністрація a regional state administration. Fix each in a glossary.

5. False friends into English

The usual traps are the source's look-alikes of English words:

5.1 The pair lists and the most frequent traps

The full lists are False friends: English and French and English and Ukrainian: false friends (both directions, by domain, measured), with the context-dependent renderings in English and French: renderings by context and English and Ukrainian: renderings by context. The traps into English that the corpora meet most often (counted 2026-11-06): from French, politique (policy or politics), demander (ask, not demand), disposition (provision), informations (uncountable information), contrôler (check), traitement (processing of data), dans le cadre de (under, within, not ✗ in the frame of), nouvelle (news, short story), société (company), réaliser (carry out), délai (time limit), propre (clean, own); from Ukrainian, мати + infinitive (be to, be supposed to as well as have to), час ("time", not "hour"), чоловік (man or husband), гроші (singular money), дзвонити кому (call someone, not ✗ call to), gendered сонце, місяць, дитина, особа (English it, he, she by the referent, not the noun's gender), відповідати на (answer without a preposition), двері (a plural noun for one door).

6. Grammar transfer into English

6.1 Articles: the main task from Ukrainian

Ukrainian has no articles, and an English target needs one on nearly every singular count noun. The translator must recover definiteness from:

• word order: a subject after the verb is usually new (a), before the verb given (the);
• the discourse: first mention a, later the;
• uniqueness: the sun, the president (of the country in question);
• genericity: generic singular the or zero plural (The wolf is a predator; Wolves are predators);
• demonstratives and один in the source (цей, той, один чоловік = "a certain man").

Article errors are the clearest sign of a translation from an article-less language, and the commonest grammar error a reviser corrects. French has articles, but uses them differently: the French generic definite (J'aime le café, Les enfants aiment jouer) is English zero (I like coffee, Children like playing); the French partitive (du pain) is English zero or some.

6.2 Tense

• The French present with depuis and the Ukrainian present with вже for a state still true become the English present perfect: J'attends depuis des heures / Я чекаю вже кілька годин → I've been waiting for hours (tatoeba:2314-4169 gives the pair).
• The French imperfect and the Ukrainian imperfective past become the English simple past, past progressive or used to / would, by sense (habit, background, process).
• The French passé simple and passé composé, and the Ukrainian perfective past, become the English simple past, or the present perfect if the result is current.
• The French historic present in narrative is kept only where English narrative uses it (lively oral narrative); otherwise it becomes the past.
• Sequence of tenses in reported speech: English back-shifts (She said she was tired) where Ukrainian keeps the original tense (Вона сказала, що втомилася / що їй погано); a Ukrainian Він сказав, що прийде is He said he would come.

6.3 Subjects and pronouns

Ukrainian drops subject pronouns; English cannot. Recover each from the verb's person, number and (in the past) gender: Прийшла пізно → She came late. The gender of a Ukrainian past verb is information English must keep: Я втомилася tells that the speaker is a woman, and an English narrative may need it elsewhere (a name, she said).

6.4 The impersonal and the passive

• Ukrainian -но/-то impersonals (Вікно розбито) → English passive (The window has been broken) or an active with a vague subject (Someone has broken the window).
• Ukrainian third-person plural with no subject (Кажуть, що …) → They say …, It is said …, People say ….
• French on → we, you, they, people or the passive, by sense: On m'a dit → I was told; On y va ? → Shall we go?

6.5 Word order

English needs subject–verb–object. A Ukrainian object-first sentence (Цю книжку написав мій дід) becomes an English active with stress or a passive: My grandfather wrote this book / This book was written by my grandfather, chosen by what is given and what is new.

7. Idioms, culture-bound items and songs

• Idioms: an English idiom of the same register where one exists (Ллє як з відра, Il pleut des cordes → It's pouring, It's raining cats and dogs); a plain paraphrase otherwise. Avoid literal renderings of source idioms; they read as quaint.
• Proverbs: an English proverb of the same meaning, if the register allows (Не кажи гоп, поки не перескочиш → Don't count your chickens before they hatch); a literal rendering in quotation marks if the proverb's foreignness is the point (a character quoting a folk saying).
• Realia: keep and explain once (general manual §7.2). Вишиванка → the vyshyvanka, the embroidered shirt; le bac → the baccalauréat, the school-leaving exam.
• Songs into English: English song grammar is looser than English prose and freer than French in stress. A singable version can use ain't, dropped subjects, gonna, contractions, and inverted order for rhyme; whether it should is decided by the source's register (general manual §9). A Ukrainian folk song's fixed epithets (червона калина, ясний місяць) are kept as fixed phrases (the red guelder rose, the bright moon), not varied each time.

8. Names, numbers, dates, typography

• Ukrainian names are romanised by the official Ukrainian system the EU recommends (Olha, Volodymyr, Zghorany; ий → yi) (commission-1982), unless the person's own spelling is known. Place names: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv.
• French names keep their accents (Éric, Hélène); M. is Mr, Mme is Mrs or Ms (or kept as Mme in literary translation, as the 19th-century Gutenberg translator kept Mme. Roland).
• Numbers: 3,5 → 3.5; 15 000 stays 15 000 in EU style, becomes 15,000 elsewhere.
• Dates: 6 червня 2026 р. / 6 juin 2026 → 6 June 2026 (British, EU) or June 6, 2026 (US).
• Quotation marks: « » → ‘ ’ or “ ” per house style; French dialogue dashes become English quotation marks, one paragraph per speaker.
• Capitals: nationality adjectives, languages, days and months take capitals in English.

9. Quality checks for translations into English

Add to the general checklist:

1. Every singular count noun has the right article, especially from Ukrainian.
2. Every source verbal-noun chain was checked for a verb rendering.
3. Every tense was mapped by sense (present perfect for continuing states; back-shift in reported speech).
4. Every subject Ukrainian dropped is supplied, with the gender the verb gave.
5. The variety's spelling, punctuation and date order are consistent throughout.
6. No tu/vous or ти/ви contrast that matters to the story was lost without compensation.

Typical labels: linguistic conventions / grammar / article; style / unidiomatic / nominal style; accuracy / mistranslation / tense; locale conventions / spelling variety mixed.

10. Worked examples into English

10.1 From French: the 19th-century translators at work

The Gutenberg pairs are French originals and English translations of the 1870s, so they show translation into English with a known direction (pairs-good-build.tsv, public domain). What the translators did, and what a modern translator might do:

Two lessons for a modern English target. The old translators often flattened metaphor and compressed clauses; a modern literary translation keeps Hugo's and Verne's images. And their idiom is dated: at bottom, in proportion as, I beheld: a new translation writes current English, unless the edition wants a period voice.

10.2 From Ukrainian: attitude without diminutives

Tatoeba sentences written in Ukrainian first (the Ukrainian id is the lower) and translated into English (pairs.tsv, CC BY 2.0 FR) show what English does with Ukrainian diminutives and particles:

The rule of Translating from Ukrainian §2.4 holds: render the attitude, not the suffix. Little, dear, old, really, a colloquial word or a softer adjective carries it; -ie forms (doggie) make adult speech childish.

11. English targets by domain

• Science. English scientific prose prefers we and the active in current style (We show that …), with the passive for methods (Samples were heated to …). A French on montre que or a Ukrainian показано, що becomes we show that; long French and Ukrainian sentences are split. Terms: the English term of the field, checked in its literature (expérience → experiment or experience by sense; розчин → solution).
• Medicine. Patient texts in plain English (heart attack, high blood pressure), clinical texts in terms (myocardial infarction, hypertension); doses and units exactly as in the source; INN drug names (paracetamol, US acetaminophen).
• Law. Civil-law concepts from French and Ukrainian sources are kept or described, not replaced by common-law ones: acte authentique → notarial deed (acte authentique); нотаріус → notary (with the civil-law sense explained if needed); Кодекс → Code (the Civil Code of Ukraine). EU English follows the EU style guide (shall, Article 3(1)) (commission-1982).
• Software. Interface English is short and imperative: Save, Cancel, Settings; a French Enregistrer (infinitive) and a Ukrainian Зберегти become imperatives, not To save or Saving.
• Journalism. Headlines in English drop articles and auxiliaries and use the present for the past (Minister resigns); French headlines use nominal style (Démission du ministre), Ukrainian ones the past or nominal style (Міністр подав у відставку, Відставка міністра). Convert to the target's headline grammar.

12. Choosing English deltas for non-standard sources

The source's deltas are mapped to English deltas of the same function (general manual §3.7, §13.1), never to a ready-made English dialect:

Constructed example of the surzhyk line:

— Ну шо, канєшно поможу, тіки ти мені скажи, шо робить. ✓ "Well, sure I'll help, only you tell me what to do." ✗ "Well, of course I shall assist you; please tell me what to do." (normalised up) ✗ "Aye, sure, I'll gie ye a hand, just tell us whit tae dae." (a Scots character)

13. How Mova handles it

Today.

• Mova writes English through the standard encoder of tools/translate, learned on all the English it holds (the training books of four Bibles, a fifth of the school's lessons in three registers, the 0.3 tales, the English of the Talmud), with an author delta per style. Each meta token is written as the chunk of words its most specific seen context gives; a concept never seen gets its bare form inflected by morph.
• The sources it writes English from are other English editions and the Hebrew Bible. From Hebrew, the reader's grammar plan (--heb-grammar on) adds what Hebrew says by structure and English by words: an of before a construct dependent, a the before a construct head whose chain is definite, a possessive for a suffix pronoun, a subject moved before its verb (hebrew::grammar_plan). These are the article and word-order tasks of §6.1 and §6.5 for one language pair, implemented and measured.
• Typography per author: quotation marks and the possessive (Moses’ or Moses') are learned from each edition (--typo on).
• There is no French → English or Ukrainian → English translation.

Planned and being built. The English Nightingale 🐦 (tools/nightingale, being built, under the Eel, with its own Sol consultant) would model the naturalness of English from the English Wikipedia, which Mova holds, and could score an English draft for translationese (§1, §2): verbal-noun density, article omissions, unusual collocations. The Eel's rounds tr-fr-en and tr-uk-en (being built) would train and measure the directions into English; tr-fr-en has the Gutenberg French-original pairs as a test of direction.

Where Mova stops. No article recovery from an article-less language other than the Hebrew grammar plan; no variety choice between British and American; no EU house-style checks.

Sources

(commission-1982) (EU English Style Guide: legislation verbs, numbers, dates, quotation marks, transliteration of Ukrainian); the general manual's sources. Corpus examples: Project Gutenberg pairs (Verne trans. Towle 1873; Maupassant trans. Clara Bell), Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), DGT-TM 2021.

The Elamur team

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