🗣️ Translating into Ukrainian

This manual is about writing Ukrainian as a target: what a Ukrainian text translated from English or French must look like to read as Ukrainian. Ukrainian prefers verbs to verbal nouns in neutral prose, the active or the subjectless -но/-то form to the passive with an agent, word order that puts the new last, and fewer pronouns and possessives than English. It also lives under two pressures at once: anglicisms from the present and Russian-calqued forms from the past, against which a purist tradition has built lists of "correct" words. This manual takes the position of the whole folder: anglicisms are partly trash, and so is full purism. The right word is the one the target's living usage supports in the register, domain and style of the text, measured, not decreed. Reading Ukrainian is in Translating from Ukrainian; the contrasts are in English and Ukrainian: the pair manual and French and Ukrainian: the pair manual.

1. Principles for a Ukrainian target

1. Write to the 2019 orthography (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019), the current norm approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, with its permitted variants chosen once per text (e.g. Гете or Ґете, міф or міт, Афіни or Атени). It writes проєкт, пів години (separately before a noun in the genitive), feminitives by § 32.4.
2. Verbs before verbal nouns in neutral prose. For the implementation of the programme → щоб виконати програму, not ✗ для здійснення виконання програми. Official prose keeps more verbal nouns, but even there chains of three are a fault.
3. New information last. English order is grammar; Ukrainian order is information. A man came in → Зайшов чоловік; The man came in → Чоловік зайшов.
4. Drop what Ukrainian does not need: subject pronouns where the verb's ending says the person; possessives where the owner is obvious; the copula є in the present.
5. Judge every borrowing and every purist replacement by usage in the register and domain (§4), and by the house style when there is one.

2. Meaning before form in a Ukrainian target

2.1 Aspect: a choice on every verb

Every Ukrainian verb chooses aspect; English and French give it only partly:

2.2 Pronouns and possessives

English repeats subject pronouns and possessives that Ukrainian leaves out:

• He put his hand in his pocket → Він засунув руку в кишеню (no свою, no його).
• I think that I will go → Думаю, що піду.
• She lost her keys → Вона загубила ключі; where the owner must be stated, the reflexive свій refers to the subject: Вона загубила свої ключі (her own), її ключі (someone else's, a woman's).
• Someone left their umbrella → Хтось залишив свою парасольку: свій is gender-free and solves singular they here (general manual §3.3).

Over-use of його, її, свій and я, ти, він is a clear sign of translation from English.

2.3 Particles: the unique items

Ukrainian speech uses particles that English and French have no word for (же, адже, хіба, таки, ну, от, бо, ще, вже); a translation from a language without them under-uses them, because nothing in the source triggers them (the unique items of the general manual §10). In dialogue, put them where a Ukrainian speaker would: I told you! → Я ж казав!; He did come after all → Таки прийшов; Come on, tell me → Ну розкажи; Didn't you know? → Хіба ти не знав?.

2.4 Restructuring English and French constructions

2.5 Information structure

Ukrainian puts the new information last and often the topic first: The decision was taken by the Government (the Government is new) → Рішення ухвалив уряд; The Government took the decision (the decision is new) → Уряд ухвалив рішення. English and French clefts become order: C'est Marie qui a appelé / It was Marie who called → Дзвонила Марія.

3. Register and style in a Ukrainian target

3.1 Official Ukrainian without the канцелярит

Official Ukrainian has its own formulas (Прошу надати …, відповідно до, у разі, з метою) and is entitled to verbal nouns. What it should avoid is the chain of verbal nouns and the agentive instrumental, which the purist tradition of the 1920s–30s already described as alien to the language's structure (smerechynskyi-1932), and which current editors still correct:

Smerechynskyi's analysis is precise: the subjectless -но/-то form (Байду вбито) is native and focuses on the action; the agent in the instrumental with it is not native in the popular language; a passive participle as predicate with було / буде (постанови було видруковано) shifts the construction towards the Russian pattern (smerechynskyi-1932). The rule for a translator: render an English or French passive with an agent by an active (The law was adopted by Parliament / La loi a été adoptée par le Parlement → Парламент ухвалив закон, or Закон ухвалив парламент with парламент new); without an agent, by the -но/-то form (Закон ухвалено), a reflexive in the imperfective (Закон ухвалюється), or the third person plural (Закон ухвалили).

3.2 Colloquial and slang

Colloquial Ukrainian in dialogue uses particles, dropped subjects, short sentences, diminutives, interjections, regional forms (шо for що in eastern and southern speech) and the slang of its group. Youth and internet slang borrows from English (крінж, краш, вайб, рофл, флексити) with Ukrainian morphology; army slang since 2022 has its own lexicon (двохсотий, арта, бавовна). A slang source gets slang; a neutral source does not (general manual §3.2's register drift). Slang dates fast: use the current slang of the target group, and check it (§4).

3.3 Ти and ви

Address in Ukrainian: ти among friends, family, children, peers online; ви to strangers, in service, in official texts, and traditionally to parents and elders. In letters and official texts addressed to one person the polite Ви is capitalised. English you gives no help; French tu / vous usually maps directly, except to parents (French tu, traditional Ukrainian ви).

3.4 The vocative

Use the vocative in address: Пане Іване!, Маріє, зачекай, друже, пані Олено, шановний пане професоре. The nominative in address (Іван, зачекай) is colloquial and a contact feature; in a narrator's voice and official letters use the vocative. Foreign names take the vocative where Ukrainian declension allows (Джоне!, Маріє!), not where it does not (Жан-П'єр!).

3.5 Feminitives

The 2019 orthography describes the formation of feminine names of persons from masculine ones: -к-(а), the most common (авторка, дизайнерка, директорка, редакторка, студентка); -иц-(я) mainly with stems in -ник (порадниця); -ин-(я) with stems in -ень and some consonant stems (кравчиня, майстриня, філологиня); -ес-(а), rare (поетеса) (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019, § 32.4). Usage has moved quickly, including in military names (synchak-2023-military-feminine). Into Ukrainian:

• a woman named by her role gets the feminitive where usage supports it: the minister said she … → міністерка сказала in most current media; міністр сказала (masculine noun, feminine verb) is the conservative official usage still found;
• a person of unknown gender gets the masculine generic, or a doubled form in a house style that uses them (студенти й студентки);
• the official name of a post in a law or staff list stays as the law writes it.

3.6 Surzhyk in a Ukrainian translation: when it is right

Surzhyk is a real variety with regularities (Translating from Ukrainian §3.5), and a translator into Ukrainian may use it. When it is right:

• for a character whose source speech is a mixed or non-standard variety with a similar social position: a provincial character speaking non-standard English, a French character in popular français populaire whose mixing or "incorrectness" characterises them. Surzhyk gives a Ukrainian reader the same social signal: everyday, unpretentious, often warm, sometimes comic;
• for humour whose joke is speech: a character who tries to sound educated and mixes registers; a parody;
• for songs whose persona is popular, comic or rural; popular song tolerates surzhyk without anyone hearing it as an error, and a cover or adaptation of a comic folk or pop song may sing in it.

When it is not right: in the narrator's voice; in official, technical, academic and informational texts; for a foreign character whose non-standard speech has nothing to do with Russian contact (an American Southerner, a Glasgow docker), where surzhyk would import a Ukrainian-Russian history; and as a lazy default for "uneducated speech". In those cases signal non-standard speech by colloquial Ukrainian means: dialect words, short forms, particles, colloquial syntax.

How much. Surzhyk is regular, so use it regularly: the same items each time (шас, канєшно, тіпа, ладно, Russian infinitives in -ть), on a Ukrainian grammatical base, at a density that keeps the text readable. One or two marked items per line of dialogue is usually enough.

3.7 House style

Ukrainian publishers and media have house styles for feminitives, transliteration, the 2019 variants, and borrowings. Follow them; they are part of the brief.

4. Anglicisms, russianisms and purism: decided by usage

4.1 Three pressures

1. Anglicisms: English words and calques (імплементувати, челендж, меседж, дедлайн, фідбек, кейс, локація); semantic calques (адресувати проблему "address a problem", зробити сенс "make sense", вийти зі свого шляху).
2. Russianisms: Russian-calqued forms in written Ukrainian: active participles in -учий/-ючий (подразнюючий), verbal nouns in -ка (заготовка for заготівля), двох-/трьох- compounds (двохповерховий for двоповерховий), nouns in -щик/-щиця, adjectives in -видний, and phrases (приймати участь, на протязі, в якості, слідуючий, являтися as copula, згідно чого). The VESUM dictionary marks over 9 300 single-word russianisms with replacements; in the GRAC corpus (version 17a) the active participles alone occur over 730 000 times, about 410 per million, and the -ка verbal nouns over 239 000 times, about 165 per million (starko-2025-dictionary-derussification). These are frequent, so frequency alone does not acquit them; they are the case where the norm and the editors' practice decide.
3. Purism: native replacements, old and new, proposed for borrowings (летовище for аеропорт, гвинтокрил for гелікоптер / вертоліт, світлина for фотографія, мапа beside карта, часопис beside журнал, реченець for дедлайн / кінцевий термін). Some won and are now neutral (мапа is common), some live in one register (світлина is literary and journalistic), some are curiosities.

4.2 The decision procedure

For each candidate pair (borrowing or calque against native, russianism against the norm):

1. Is the item fixed by the house style or the law? Then that.
2. Does the target register use it? Count in texts of the register and domain written in Ukrainian (not translated): official texts, news, fiction, the domain's own writing, the speech of the target group.
3. Is there a meaning difference? Волонтер (established, with its own Ukrainian sense since 2014) is not replaced by доброволець (also "volunteer soldier"); менеджер and бізнес are established terms; кейс in business and law means a case study, випадок is general.
4. Is the native form current, or a museum? A native word nobody in the register uses makes the text odd; a borrowing nobody needs makes it translationese.
5. Choose, record, keep consistent.

4.3 What the counts say, and their limits

Mova holds no corpus of current Ukrainian yet. A count made for this manual over the Ukrainian Wikisource (dump of 2026-09-01, 567 687 pages, whole-word matches with all markup; counted 2026-11-06) shows what kind of answer counts give, and why the slice matters. Wikisource holds mostly older literature and documents, so these are figures of historical written usage, not of today's:

The figures do not settle today's usage, which the Ukrainian Wikipedia counts of §11 sample and the Ukrainian Nightingale is being built to measure (§15). They do show the two errors this manual warns against. A purist verdict ("являється is a russianism, never write it") ignores that the form was long in Ukrainian written use; a borrowing ("імплементувати is the modern word") ignores that the native впроваджувати is far more common. In current neutral and official prose the norm's choices (протягом, брати участь, наступний, є) are also the editors' choices, and a translation should use them; in a character's speech the criticised forms may be exactly right.

5. False friends into Ukrainian

5.1 The pair lists and the most frequent traps

The full lists are English and Ukrainian: false friends and French and Ukrainian: false friends, both directions, by domain, measured, with the Russian-channel, surzhyk and Polish-channel traps judged by usage and register as in §3.6 and §4; the context-dependent renderings (ти/ви, aspect pairs, passives, справа or питання for issue …) are in English and Ukrainian: renderings by context and French and Ukrainian: renderings by context. The traps into Ukrainian the corpora meet most often (counted 2026-11-06, mostly Tatoeba): any → ✗ любий (through Russian любой; ✓ будь-який), the copula be → ✗ являтися (✓ є or nothing), now → зараз, тепер (щас, шас only in surzhyk speech), help → допомагати кому (dative), right, correct → правильний (careful style keeps вірний for "faithful"), city → місто (✗ город), try → спробувати or пробувати by aspect, money → гроші (plural agreement), of course → звичайно, звісно (канєшно in character speech), the gender of дитина (feminine) for French l'enfant (masculine), consider → вважати (✗ рахувати, "count").

6. Grammar into Ukrainian

6.1 Case government

Prepositions and verbs govern cases, and calques from Russian and English break the government: згідно з законом (not ✗ згідно закону, though common), дякувати кому (dative: дякую вам), навчатися чого or вчитися чого, з питання (not ✗ по питанню), у справі, відповідно до. Згідно з is the norm; the genitive government is widespread and stigmatised by editors.

6.2 Numerals

Два, три, чотири + nominative plural (два столи, три книжки); п'ять and above + genitive plural (п'ять столів); collective numerals for people of mixed groups and children (двоє дітей, троє друзів); півтора + genitive singular (півтора року); пів separate before a noun in the genitive (пів години) (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019).

6.3 Participles and adverbial participles

• Active present participles (-учий/-ючий) are restricted: write що + verb (людина, що читає), an adjective in -льний (подразнювальний), or a noun (starko-2025-dictionary-derussification). Lexicalised adjectives (блискучий, співучий, колючий) are fine.
• Passive participles are normal (прочитаний, зроблений), and the -но/-то form is their subjectless predicate (зроблено).
• Adverbial participles (прочитавши, ідучи) must share the main verb's subject; English dangling participles must be repaired (Walking home, the rain started → Коли я йшов додому, почався дощ).

6.4 Reported speech

No back-shift: He said he was tired → Він сказав, що втомився (past) or що він утомлений; She said she would come → Вона сказала, що прийде.

6.5 Euphony: у/в, і/й, з/із/зі

The 2019 orthography regulates the alternation of у/в, і/й and з/із/зі by the neighbouring sounds (§§ 23–25): Він увійшов у хату, Вона ввійшла в хату; брат і сестра, сестра й брат. Translators who type fast break it; a reviser restores it.

6.6 Word order and clitic-like pronouns

Unstressed pronouns and the particle ж tend to stand early: Я ж тобі казав. The verb often precedes a new subject (Прийшов лист). Place adverbs and time expressions first when they set the scene (Учора до нас приїхала тітка).

7. Idioms, culture-bound items and songs

• Idioms: a Ukrainian idiom of the same meaning and register (ллє як з відра; мати інші клопоти; на городі бузина, а в Києві дядько for a non sequitur), paraphrase otherwise. Literal renderings are the commonest machine error (petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom).
• Realia of the source culture: keep and explain once, or a general term; avoid domesticating a foreign custom into a Ukrainian one in informational texts.
• Bible and liturgy: the LORD / l'Éternel → Господь; the translation tradition of the target church decides further (Ohienko's and Khomenko's Bible translations are standard references, both still in copyright).
• Songs into Ukrainian. Ukrainian has free stress and no sung mute e; a singable version counts syllables and puts stressed syllables on strong beats. Ukrainian song grammar allows inversions (калина червона), short adjectives (зелен гай), vocatives (Ой ти, дівчино), diminutives and dropped subjects. An English lyric in ain't and double negatives becomes colloquial song Ukrainian, not the literary norm; Ukrainian negative concord is standard (Ніхто нічого не дав), so the non-standard mark must be carried by other means (slang, short forms, particles, a few surzhyk items if the persona fits, §3.6). A French chanson's elisions become Ukrainian colloquial short forms (шо, нема, тре), sparingly.

8. Names, numbers, dates, typography

• Foreign names by the 2019 orthography (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019, §§ 121–139): English w → в (Вашингтон, Вілсон; traditional у in Уельс); th → т for [θ] (трилер, Артур), з for [ð] (Резерфорд); g → г, with ґ allowed in personal names (Гете / Ґете); h → г (Гарвард), traditional х in a few words (хобі, хокей); English [æ] → а (хакер, Чаплін) with traditional е in some (бізнесмен, менеджер); English [ə:] → ер (серфінг, Черчилль). French ll, ill per § 125. Declension of foreign names per § 140 and §§ 142–146.
• French names: Жан, П'єр, Марі; silent letters dropped (Дюма, Гюго); stress final.
• Place names: Лондон, Париж, Брюссель, Женева; established exonyms.
• Numbers: decimal comma (3,5), space for thousands (15 000), % after a space or closed up by house style; тис., млн, млрд.
• Dates: 6 червня 2026 року (or р.); 06.06.2026; centuries XXI століття; no capital for months and days.
• Currency: 2400 гривень, 2400 грн, 2400 євро, $2400 → 2400 доларів.
• Typography: « » without inner spaces, „ “ or “ ” inside; no full stop, comma, semicolon, colon or dash before the closing guillemet; ? ! … go before it if they belong to the quotation (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019, § 164). Dialogue in prose with the dash (—). The apostrophe as a letter sign (з'їзд, м'ята; typographically ʼ U+02BC in careful setting).
• Capitals: lowercase days, months, nationality adjectives; capital for the polite Ви to one addressee in letters.

9. Quality checks for translations into Ukrainian

Add to the general checklist:

1. Every verb's aspect fits its meaning.
2. No redundant subject pronouns and possessives; свій used for the subject's own.
3. Word order puts the new last.
4. No passive with an agent in the instrumental where an active is natural; no chains of verbal nouns.
5. Every borrowing and every native replacement was judged by register usage and house style; russianisms of the norm's lists are corrected in neutral and official prose, kept in characters' speech only by decision.
6. Feminitives used consistently with the house style.
7. Surzhyk used only where §3.6 allows, consistently.
8. The 2019 orthography: у/в, і/й, з/із/зі; apostrophe; пів; chosen variants consistent.
9. Typography: « », the dash, punctuation outside closing guillemets.
10. Case government after prepositions and verbs; numerals' cases.

Typical labels: style / unidiomatic / calque (вийшов зі свого шляху); style / register (surzhyk in a narrator, slang in a neutral text); linguistic conventions / grammar / case government (згідно закону); linguistic conventions / spelling (проект for проєкт); style / translationese (pronoun and possessive overuse).

11. Measured usage in the Ukrainian Wikipedia

The Ukrainian Wikipedia (dump of 2026-10-01) was streamed and counted for this manual on 2026-11-06: whole-word, case-insensitive matches of each form or stem over the full text with its markup (the dump was not unpacked to disk). The slice is encyclopaedic neutral Ukrainian, edited by norm-conscious editors, partly translated from English and Russian, and the counts include template text, captions and references; they are evidence for this register, not for speech, law or fiction. The Ukrainian Nightingale is being built to make such measurements properly, by domain and period (§15).

What the table says for a translator into Ukrainian, in neutral written prose:

1. Where the norm and usage agree (протягом, брати участь, наступний, впроваджувати, виклик, водночас), the choice is settled: use the norm. Using на протязі or приймати участь marks the text as careless or calqued.
2. Where usage has kept a criticised form at scale (в якості 33 141, являється 25 977, відноситься до 8 208, згідно + genitive 15 821), the purist rule is not the language's living norm in this register, but careful editing still replaces them, and the replacement is never wrong: як, є, стосується, згідно з. Choose the replacement in neutral and official prose; keep the calque only for a character or a quoted voice.
3. Where the borrowing has won (аеропорт, менеджер, волонтер, смартфон), purist replacements (летовище) are a stylistic choice for a house style that wants them, not a correction.
4. Where both live (вертоліт / гелікоптер, фотографія / світлина, журнал / часопис, прийняти / ухвалити рішення), choose by register and house style: світлина and часопис are more literary and journalistic; ухвалити рішення is the official form.
5. Where the 2019 rule and usage diverge (гештег 42 against хештег 443), follow the house style; without one, usage.

12. Worked examples into Ukrainian

12.1 From English: choices visible in Tatoeba EN–UK

12.2 From French: what Ukrainian may drop

12.3 A legal sentence

EU French Le présent règlement est obligatoire dans tous ses éléments et directement applicable dans tout État membre (dgt-tm-v2021:139003) and its English This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States are rendered in Ukrainian translations of EU acts, for example, as Цей Регламент є обов'язковим у повному обсязі та підлягає прямому застосуванню в усіх державах-членах (the wording varies between translations; check the official Ukrainian version of each act). Here є обов'язковим (copula є with the instrumental) is the legal register's normal construction, not the overuse of §2.4: legal Ukrainian keeps the copula where neutral prose drops it.

13. Ukrainian targets by domain

• Legal: the present for obligation (Сторони зобов'язуються …, Закон набирає чинності …); відповідно до, у разі, з урахуванням; стаття 4 частина 1 or частина перша статті 4; capitals for the titles of acts (Закон України «Про …») and guillemets around them.
• Official letters: Шановний пане …!; Повідомляю Вам, що …; З повагою,; the polite Ви capitalised.
• Medicine: спосіб застосування та дози, побічні реакції, протипоказання, умови зберігання; dosages 500 мг 3 рази на добу.
• Software: infinitives on buttons (Зберегти, Скасувати); ви in messages (lowercase on screens by most house styles); four plural forms for counts (general manual §16.3).
• Science: the first person plural (ми показали, показано), розглянуто, встановлено; the decimal comma; SI units.
• News: the past in headlines (Уряд ухвалив …), the present for ongoing events; current place names (Київ, Харків; foreign: Брюссель, Женева).

14. Ukrainian deltas for non-standard sources

15. How Mova handles it

Today. Mova does not write Ukrainian. It has no Ukrainian parser, lexicon, morphology or encoder. Its first English–Ukrainian and French–Ukrainian corpora (Tatoeba, the Kulish/Puluj Bible against the WEB, the KJV and Louis Segond) were built on 2026-11-06 and are quoted in §12. The norms this manual relies on are in the Research library: the 2019 orthography (an official document, not protected by copyright, and the reference for any future Ukrainian QA gate), Smerechynskyi's syntax (1932, public domain in Ukraine and the EU), Syniavskyi's practical guide (1922) and Simovych's grammar (1919). The derussification work it cites is VESUM's, whose dictionary data are CC BY-NC-SA, usable by Mova for tests and measurement only (starko-2025-dictionary-derussification). tools/translate's encoder design (a standard encoder plus an author delta per style, learned from counts) is how a Ukrainian encoder would be built: one standard for Ukrainian and deltas for official, neutral, colloquial and song styles, and perhaps one for surzhyk as a variety modifier.

Planned and being built.

• The Ukrainian Nightingale 🐦 (tools/nightingale, being built; one per language, under the Eel, with its own Sol consultant) would build a naturalness model of Ukrainian from the Ukrainian Wikipedia (to be fetched) on the CPU. For a Ukrainian target it is the instrument of §4: for each candidate pair (впроваджувати / імплементувати, протягом / на протязі, гелікоптер / вертоліт, міністерка / міністр with a feminine verb), the frequency by domain (article category) and by period (revision dates), and a naturalness score for a translated sentence (pronoun and possessive density, verbal-noun chains, order). Its limits: Wikipedia is encyclopaedic neutral Ukrainian, not official, colloquial, song or surzhyk; part of it is translated from English or Russian and carries their calques; its edits are partly by norm-conscious editors, so it leans to the norm; and it is CC BY-SA, so its models measure and do not ship. The Ukrainian Wikisource count of §4.3 (historical) and the Ukrainian Wikipedia count of §11 (current encyclopaedic) are first slices of the same measurement, made by hand with a stream count.
• The Eel's rounds tr-en-uk and tr-fr-uk (being built) would start from the Tatoeba and Bible pairs.

Where Mova stops. Nothing here is implemented for Ukrainian; the counts of §4.3 and §11 were made by hand for this manual.

Sources

Norms and grammars: (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019) (§§ 23–25, 32.4, 121–146, 164); (smerechynskyi-1932) (the passive, the -но/-то form, the agentive instrumental, verbal nouns); Syniavskyi 1922; Simovych 1919. Open research: (starko-2025-dictionary-derussification), (synchak-2023-military-feminine), (grozea-2025), (petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom); the surzhyk studies cited in Translating from Ukrainian. Counts: Ukrainian Wikisource dump of 2026-09-01 and Ukrainian Wikipedia dump of 2026-10-01 (CC BY-SA and public-domain texts; counted only), 2026-11-06. Corpus examples: Tatoeba EN–UK and FR–UK (CC BY 2.0 FR), DGT-TM, Kulish/Puluj Bible (1905).

The Elamur team

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