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Russian translator5/3/2023 They Won’t Stick Back Together in a Russian TranslationĪs mentioned above, word order in Russian grammar can be totally different from English. You could also ask the translator to create a glossary with every single variation of the Russian terms, but this would be going too far! Don’t Break Sentences Apart If you insist and force the translator to follow all formal instructions, you might just kill the quality you think you are assuring. You won’t improve the quality by continuously asking a translator why he or she does not “follow the glossary” and demanding explanations of things that would be obvious to any native speaker. If you do not speak Russian, yet manage terminology in a Russian translation, you should either use QA tools that understand Russian morphology, or assume that all terms with different endings are correct, as long as they have a similar beginning and a spellchecker does not flag them as spelling mistakes. Read a real-life story about such a case. The translator may comply with your request - just to not lose you as a customer, but the result will make readers cry (or laugh, depending on their sense of humor). It would be a great mistake to force a translator to use a term exactly as it appears in the glossary. In view of all this, if you are responsible for terminology quality control in Russian translations, please bear in mind that the entries you see in a glossary are just one of many possible word forms, and translators will change them to suit the context. do, does, doing, did, done), but in Russian the number of verb variations is hard even to count, since the ending depends on verb tense, gender, mood, and amount, and all of these factors combine to create a highly context-specific word form. ![]() English verbs have just five variations (e.g. thing, things), while Russian nouns have 12 variations depending on how they are used in a sentence. English nouns have only singular and plural forms (e.g. To make this possible, each Russian word can have dozens, or even hundreds of variations. Take a look at the table below:Īs you can see, a Russian sentence uses specific endings to link the words, so you can arrange most parts of the sentence in any sequence and the sentence will still be grammatically correct, e.g. However, in Russian each of these variations is valid, since every word has a specific ending that preserves the meaning. For example, in English you can say “ I like singing in the bathroom”, but you cannot say “ I singing in the bathroom like” or “ Like singing I in the bathroom”. In English sentences, words are linked together by prepositions in a rather rigid structure, whereas in Russian, the rules are not so strict, and you can technically put the words together in almost any sequence. In fact, such checks often only cause frustration and misunderstandings, and here is why it happens: One of the most notable differences between English and Russian is that the same Russian word may have dozens or even hundreds of variations, making it very difficult to manage terminology using generic QA tools. Ukrainian, Polish, Slovakian, etc.), so these tips are valid for more than just Russian. ![]() We note that similar problems exist with other Slavic languages (e.g. Below we present some simple facts that will allow you to avoid common mistakes and misunderstandings when working with your Russian suppliers. This article is intended for people who do not speak Russian but have to order, manage, and coordinate Russian translations.
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