Russian to English Translation

Beware of false friends

Russian and English belong to the same language family – Indo-European, which means that they share the same proto-language. This results in some shared vocabulary. Through interaction over the course of history, there is also shared vocabulary that resulted from borrowing.

When you translate Russian into English, this makes things a bit easier. But it also creates the danger of false friends: words in the two languages that look and sound similar but differ significantly in meaning.

This means that when you see a word in Russian that seems to have an exact equivalent in English, it is a good idea to double-check in a good dictionary: this may be a false friend. It is even more important in the business context when you translate documents.

Watch the word order closely

Word order is one of the trickiest things in Russian to English translation. The word order in the Russian language is much less strict than in English. In fact, words can often be moved around quite freely to convey different shades of meaning and to shift emphasis. This matters especially if we view sentences in context, and not separately.

Thus, when you translate Russian to English, it is important to pay attention to the subtle meanings expressed by the word order, and try and translate them adequately. 

Avoid machine translation

Despite belonging to the same group, Russian and English have quite a few structural differences. There are also cultural differences that you need to account for when you translate Russian to English. Despite the developments in modern technology, a machine cannot do that as well as a human can.

With our experienced team, you will get the best Russian to English translation in Singapore that no machine translation can compare with.

Russian is a world language

With over 150 million native speakers and over 250 million speakers in total, Russian is the world’s 8th most widespread language. Russian is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, and it is an unofficial lingua franca in many former Soviet countries, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, and others.

There is also a considerable Russian-speaking in Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, China, the U.S., and Israel. Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations, UNESCO, WHO, World Bank, and a few other international organizations. It is indeed one of the world’s top languages, and Russian to English translation is in high demand.

Russian has fewer words than English

There are around 500,000 words in the Russian language, compared to about 1,000,000 words in English. This does not mean that Russian is a ‘poorer’ language – not at all. It is just different and often quite creative in its use of words.

There are a lot of words with multiple meanings in the Russian language and lots of idiomatic expressions that convey different emotions and shades of meaning. This makes Russian to English translation quite tricky at times.

Cyrillic Alphabet

Russian is written in the Cyrillic script that was developed in the 9th century CE. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek script, with added letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures that were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek.

Certain letters of Cyrillic alphabet are similar to those of the Latin script used in English, but there are false friends here as well: letters that look the same but are used to represent completely different sounds.