August 17, 2017 at 16:31How to write normal texts in English without being a native speaker
Ksenia Kalanova, a graduate of our copywriting course and marketer at MERA , wrote a column for the Netology blog on how to make text sound “in English”, even when it’s still far from Advanced.
My whole life is connected with the English language: school olympiads, preparation for entrance exams to a university, five years at the translation department, summer in the USA and travels around the world. In my student years I worked as a translator, and immediately after graduation I worked as an interpreter.
Since I got a job as a marketer in an international IT company, more and more people turn to me with requests to write or edit English texts of IT topics.
If not for the experience of working as a translator, such requests would put me in a stupor. After all, my text will be seen by foreigners - clients of the company, managers!
In this article, I will share secrets on how to make the text sound "in English" if you are not a native speaker. To do this, I’ll tell you about 5 main mistakes that prevent you from writing normal English text.
Usually I do not start the text until I understand the topic. To do this, I go online and watch how they talk about her in a professional English-speaking environment. If you are not fluent in English, then it is better to first get an idea of the subject in your native language.
For example, recently I was commissioned to describe projects in the field of UX / UI design for a company's portfolio. To get familiar with the topic vocabulary, I visited several random sites that appeared on the first page of Google search: dtelepathy.com , litehouse.harman.com and sixdimensions.com . Studying sites, I dwelled in more detail on the portfolio section (“Our portfolio”, “Works” or “Case studies”) to get an idea of the structure of such texts.
Here are some useful expressions that I managed to find:
In fact, there were four times as many written expressions. I listed only those that were useful to me one way or another at the stage of creating the text:
Examples of using written expressions in real text
It is better to write out words that are potentially useful for a future article, not separately, but in context. At the same time, the examples of use should not be too long, otherwise they will definitely want to be copied entirely to your article, which will reduce its uniqueness. Ideally write out phrases of 3-5 words, not counting the prepositions and articles. Best of all, if it is a combination of a noun with a verb and a preposition, a noun with an adjective. Such phrases are easily combined with each other and serve as a good basis for making sentences of any complexity.
Only after you delve into the topic and create your own list of professional terms, you can start writing text. Do not write the text first in Russian, and especially do not translate it using machine translation services - prefer dictionaries to them. Otherwise, your article will suffer from literalism.
Original - “ iOS-specific graphics templates ”
Machine translation - “IOS-specific graphics templates”
Human - made translation - “native iOS patterns”
The machine assigned each noun exactly as many lexical units as the original: templates (what?) Are characteristic and graphic; characteristic (for what?) for iOS.
Of course, such a phrase will be understandable to a native speaker, but a more capacious second translation option, made taking into account the peculiarities of the English language, will be more familiar to him. In a phrase compiled by a human translator, the iOS noun stands in preposition and acts as an adjective.
In addition, Google Translate does not perceive extralinguistic factors: subject matter and style of the source text, cultural features of the target language, etc. For example:
Original - “lead a team of architects”
Machine translation - manage a team of architects
Human - made translation - provide architectural design leadership to the team of engineers
Of all the possible options for translating the word "architect" - architect, designer, engineer - Google The translator used the most famous.
The man realized that we are talking about designers of the architecture of a software product, and in the context of an article about application design. Hence, in the second version of the translation, the words “architectural”, “design”, “engineers” appeared.
While auto-translators have not learned to adopt the way of thinking of representatives of different nationalities, you should not expect a professional translation from them.
This does not mean that words cannot be translated separately. Still, we think in Russian and often the dictionary is the only source in which you can find previously unknown English correspondence. It is important that a person, unlike a machine, is able to determine what word he is looking for, for what situation and understand that he has found a suitable one. When the Russian-English dictionary gives out 10 or more options for translating the same word, you can:
The same word in English can have different meanings. In the dictionaries, they are numbered in Arabic numerals, starting with the most popular.
Do not forget about compatibility: many English words lose their direct meanings in idiomatic expressions. So, the phrase “from scratch” is translated “from scratch, from scratch,” although the word “scratch” itself means scratching, scratching, scribbling, etc.
All kinds of phrases with the searched word can also be found in the explanatory English dictionary in Phrases section
Following the Phrases section in the dictionary are phrasal verbs. This is a combination of a verb with other parts of speech (usually an adverb or a preposition), which can radically change the meaning of the original word. The etymology of some phrasal verbs cannot be explained even to native speakers. However, they are very common in the speech of Americans and British:
You need to use them, constantly checking yourself against the explanatory dictionary
At the stage of writing the text, the question arises before the copywriter: how to abstract from the native language and start writing in the English manner? Foreigners themselves are advised to use language-stable speech and phraseological units. To find such designs, search web services will help us, in English - “search engines”. To search for information in English, it is most convenient to use the Google search service.
The main difference between search engines and dictionaries is that the search results are based on the frequency of queries. So, as you enter words into the Google search string, you get the most common combinations with it:
If in doubt about how to use the English word, enter it into the Google search line in different variations and see which combination will get more matches. This method is suitable for selecting a verb, adjective or preposition to a noun.
The phrase “fast speed” is often used, and the phrase “high speed” is 506 times more frequent.
Surprisingly, Google helps not only with the compatibility of words, but also with grammar. For example, choose the correct tense of the verb.
Past Simple is used in the same structured sentences as in our text: “a client / company required a redesign”. Even the theme in these examples is the same as ours: “a redesign of a website”
Past Continuous scored just two matches: one with the Australian domain, the other with careless typos in the text. It is better to question such results.
Do not be too lazy to read the whole snippet and make sure that the words on both sides of the desired phrase do not change its meaning and are not separated by a dot or comma. When there is not enough text on the search page, I click on the search link and use the combination Ctrl + F to find the phrase in the context. I advise you at the same time to go over your eyes throughout the text, evaluating its quality. If there are errors in the article or a sloppy layout catches your eye, this source is hardly worth trusting.
In order not to waste time checking the quality of the text, look for matches only on sites with the .com domain. In addition, special operators and Google search tools can significantly reduce search time.
They help to find a phrase strictly in the form in which you entered it in the search line: while preserving the order of words, articles, prepositions, etc. This is the narrowest type of correspondence that, when used carelessly, leads to a loss of information.
For example, you entered a phrase that you doubt, enclosed it in quotation marks, and set “exact match” in the settings. As a result, we realized that there was something to doubt.
Do not rush to close the page with the search, because a negative result is also a result. You can "play" with him, gradually changing one element in the phrase and observing which of the changes will entail coincidence. Unsuccessful changes can be reverted back. The main thing is to try as many different combinations as possible.
Let's try to replace the word “fast” with “high”:
And if you use a different pretext:
There are matches , but the expression “with the high speed” is used in another situation: instead of high speed, we mean high-speed Wi-Fi. The two lower links are the description of the hotels, they can be ignored.
We will return the preposition “at” and replace the article from a certain to an indefinite one:
Again, a small number of matches.
Finally, we completely get rid of the article. And voila: A
solid number of matches. So the phrase will be used in this version
Allows you to search for a phrase in which one or more words are unknown. This operator is especially helpful when an unknown word or word is in doubt in the middle of a phrase. With * you can pick up new combinations of words that in themselves, perhaps, would never have crossed my mind.
For example, we want to learn how, besides the obvious “good” or “bad”, you can characterize the user experience, “User Experience (UX)”. If you simply enter the phrase in the search bar, we get more than two million matches, among which there will be combinations of the searched word with all possible parts of speech. In order to select among all the options the figure “adjective + UX” will take half a life.
It is much simpler and more convenient to set the context using the * operator so that the word omitted in the phrase is an adjective. For example: "to enable a * UX".
It turns out that the user experience in English can be characterized by the following adjectives: pleasurable, better, seamless, consistent, new, digital-first, world-class, smooth, great, superior. And these are just the first two pages of the search.
Operators can be combined with each other, each time getting more accurate and creative combinations of words. A complete list of Google operators can be found here .
Many editors such as MS Word have built-in spell checking tools. However, if they are not enough, specialized services for checking texts come to the rescue. One of the tools I tested is grammarly.com .
Its advantage is that it checks not only each word individually, but also combinations of words. In addition to recognizing spelling mistakes, it helps to correct the grammar: missing articles, incorrect prepositions and forms of pronouns, incorrect verb tenses.
Mistake: the form of the verb “was” is not consistent with the plural form of the subject “concepts”
The service also made an attempt to check the text in terms of style. The editor “swears” when using stamps, passive voice, too long sentences and often repeated words.
In addition, each error is accompanied by a brief explanation and / or replacement option.
Similar services: Ginger , Hemingway .
However, machine-based validation tools will only help to “comb” your text. The editor will help to completely clean it from errors.
If you work in a large international company, you probably have English-speaking colleagues to whom you can show your text. Perhaps your company even has professional English-language editors. Then you are very lucky. Otherwise, the network has many services like proz.com or translatorscafe.com , where for little money freelancers from the USA or Great Britain will be happy to check your text. In English, such a person is called the capacious word "proofreader".
Using editorial services, take a check on terminology, spelling and punctuation yourself. After all, a person may absolutely not understand the topic that you are writing about. You may also not know anything about the literacy level of the reviewer.
Fortunately, any foreigner, regardless of the level of his professionalism, will immediately notice unsuccessful phrases and cultural discrepancies in the text. Surely many have heard from English-speaking friends: "Sorry, this is just wrong." Ask your assistant to reformulate the bad places so that they do not stand out from the rest of the text.
Sometimes language forums help, where people ask questions to native speakers of a foreign language regarding the use of certain words, for example: forum.wordreference.com or english.stackexchange.com . As a rule, such forums are inhabited by linguists and professional translators, and if you delve deeply into their discussions, you can find the truth.
The user forum.wordreference.com under the nickname "Descendant" asks the forum users the difference between the English words "template" and "pattern" The forum
users explain to the user "Descendant" the interpretation of each word and give examples of usage
A high-quality English text written not by a native speaker is not a myth or the fruit of a rare talent. This research, constant self-criticism and the ability to question the first option that came to mind.
For the text to sound “in English”, you must:
Using this approach when writing English texts, you will cease to feel that knowledge of English works against you. On the contrary, your texts will bring you positive feedback from colleagues and, possibly, career growth. And this, at first glance, overwork will become a chore for you not only when writing working texts in English, but also when compiling resumes, personal emails and other documents.
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Profession web developer
HTML and CSS + JavaScript + backend development of PHP + JavaScript in a browser and Web API.
Profession Product
Manager Business process management at all stages of product creation: from idea to prototype and release.
Profession food designer
Web and mobile interface design, practical UX design, UI analytics.
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My whole life is connected with the English language: school olympiads, preparation for entrance exams to a university, five years at the translation department, summer in the USA and travels around the world. In my student years I worked as a translator, and immediately after graduation I worked as an interpreter.
Since I got a job as a marketer in an international IT company, more and more people turn to me with requests to write or edit English texts of IT topics.
If not for the experience of working as a translator, such requests would put me in a stupor. After all, my text will be seen by foreigners - clients of the company, managers!
In this article, I will share secrets on how to make the text sound "in English" if you are not a native speaker. To do this, I’ll tell you about 5 main mistakes that prevent you from writing normal English text.
Mistake 1. To write without studying the topic in English sources
Usually I do not start the text until I understand the topic. To do this, I go online and watch how they talk about her in a professional English-speaking environment. If you are not fluent in English, then it is better to first get an idea of the subject in your native language.
For example, recently I was commissioned to describe projects in the field of UX / UI design for a company's portfolio. To get familiar with the topic vocabulary, I visited several random sites that appeared on the first page of Google search: dtelepathy.com , litehouse.harman.com and sixdimensions.com . Studying sites, I dwelled in more detail on the portfolio section (“Our portfolio”, “Works” or “Case studies”) to get an idea of the structure of such texts.
Here are some useful expressions that I managed to find:
- to reinvent / rethink / reimagine / redesign smb's ... tool / app
- to redesign information architecture / application structure
- to enable a consistent and device-agnostic experience
- to navigate an intuitive technology experience
- to give ... a seamless experience
- we partnered with ... to / we were engaged to help ... / we were tasked with ... / we were brought on to ... / we provided architectural design leadership for ...
- to conduct user interviews / online surveys / a study
- to examine app for strengths and weaknesses
- to incorporate design elements
- to develop designs elements using the brand colors
- to rework the app's user experience with nods to other famously-addictive instant messaging apps
- an elegant and intuitive app
- to determine a set of functionality
- each bit of functionality was approved at every step by ...
- fresh visual design elements
In fact, there were four times as many written expressions. I listed only those that were useful to me one way or another at the stage of creating the text:
Examples of using written expressions in real text
It is better to write out words that are potentially useful for a future article, not separately, but in context. At the same time, the examples of use should not be too long, otherwise they will definitely want to be copied entirely to your article, which will reduce its uniqueness. Ideally write out phrases of 3-5 words, not counting the prepositions and articles. Best of all, if it is a combination of a noun with a verb and a preposition, a noun with an adjective. Such phrases are easily combined with each other and serve as a good basis for making sentences of any complexity.
Mistake 2. Use machine translation tools and ignore dictionaries
Only after you delve into the topic and create your own list of professional terms, you can start writing text. Do not write the text first in Russian, and especially do not translate it using machine translation services - prefer dictionaries to them. Otherwise, your article will suffer from literalism.
Original - “ iOS-specific graphics templates ”
Machine translation - “IOS-specific graphics templates”
Human - made translation - “native iOS patterns”
The machine assigned each noun exactly as many lexical units as the original: templates (what?) Are characteristic and graphic; characteristic (for what?) for iOS.
Of course, such a phrase will be understandable to a native speaker, but a more capacious second translation option, made taking into account the peculiarities of the English language, will be more familiar to him. In a phrase compiled by a human translator, the iOS noun stands in preposition and acts as an adjective.
In addition, Google Translate does not perceive extralinguistic factors: subject matter and style of the source text, cultural features of the target language, etc. For example:
Original - “lead a team of architects”
Machine translation - manage a team of architects
Human - made translation - provide architectural design leadership to the team of engineers
Of all the possible options for translating the word "architect" - architect, designer, engineer - Google The translator used the most famous.
The man realized that we are talking about designers of the architecture of a software product, and in the context of an article about application design. Hence, in the second version of the translation, the words “architectural”, “design”, “engineers” appeared.
While auto-translators have not learned to adopt the way of thinking of representatives of different nationalities, you should not expect a professional translation from them.
This does not mean that words cannot be translated separately. Still, we think in Russian and often the dictionary is the only source in which you can find previously unknown English correspondence. It is important that a person, unlike a machine, is able to determine what word he is looking for, for what situation and understand that he has found a suitable one. When the Russian-English dictionary gives out 10 or more options for translating the same word, you can:
- View suggested options. It often happens that you are looking for an already familiar word, but you cannot remember which one. When you cling to him with a look, something clicks in your head and you know for sure: “this is it”;
- look for a translation of the word marked “wed.”, “comp.”, “tech.” and so on, if you are looking for a term. In such cases, I use the multitran.ru dictionary, where the words are divided into categories depending on the scope of use. By the way, this dictionary knows many stable phrases and idiomatic expressions;
- if the word is completely new to you, there is nothing left to do but to sort out the translation options from the “general” section and check them against the explanatory English-language dictionary. On sites such as oxforddictionaries.com and dictionary.com, you will find the interpretation of words along with usage examples and easily find the right one for your situation. There you can go over your eyes on the list of synonyms and find an already familiar word in which you are one hundred percent sure.
The same word in English can have different meanings. In the dictionaries, they are numbered in Arabic numerals, starting with the most popular.
Do not forget about compatibility: many English words lose their direct meanings in idiomatic expressions. So, the phrase “from scratch” is translated “from scratch, from scratch,” although the word “scratch” itself means scratching, scratching, scribbling, etc.
All kinds of phrases with the searched word can also be found in the explanatory English dictionary in Phrases section
Following the Phrases section in the dictionary are phrasal verbs. This is a combination of a verb with other parts of speech (usually an adverb or a preposition), which can radically change the meaning of the original word. The etymology of some phrasal verbs cannot be explained even to native speakers. However, they are very common in the speech of Americans and British:
You need to use them, constantly checking yourself against the explanatory dictionary
Mistake 3. Hoping for dictionaries and not checking text through a search engine
At the stage of writing the text, the question arises before the copywriter: how to abstract from the native language and start writing in the English manner? Foreigners themselves are advised to use language-stable speech and phraseological units. To find such designs, search web services will help us, in English - “search engines”. To search for information in English, it is most convenient to use the Google search service.
The main difference between search engines and dictionaries is that the search results are based on the frequency of queries. So, as you enter words into the Google search string, you get the most common combinations with it:
If in doubt about how to use the English word, enter it into the Google search line in different variations and see which combination will get more matches. This method is suitable for selecting a verb, adjective or preposition to a noun.
The phrase “fast speed” is often used, and the phrase “high speed” is 506 times more frequent.
Surprisingly, Google helps not only with the compatibility of words, but also with grammar. For example, choose the correct tense of the verb.
Past Simple is used in the same structured sentences as in our text: “a client / company required a redesign”. Even the theme in these examples is the same as ours: “a redesign of a website”
Past Continuous scored just two matches: one with the Australian domain, the other with careless typos in the text. It is better to question such results.
Do not be too lazy to read the whole snippet and make sure that the words on both sides of the desired phrase do not change its meaning and are not separated by a dot or comma. When there is not enough text on the search page, I click on the search link and use the combination Ctrl + F to find the phrase in the context. I advise you at the same time to go over your eyes throughout the text, evaluating its quality. If there are errors in the article or a sloppy layout catches your eye, this source is hardly worth trusting.
In order not to waste time checking the quality of the text, look for matches only on sites with the .com domain. In addition, special operators and Google search tools can significantly reduce search time.
Quotation marks and Exact Match tool
They help to find a phrase strictly in the form in which you entered it in the search line: while preserving the order of words, articles, prepositions, etc. This is the narrowest type of correspondence that, when used carelessly, leads to a loss of information.
For example, you entered a phrase that you doubt, enclosed it in quotation marks, and set “exact match” in the settings. As a result, we realized that there was something to doubt.
Do not rush to close the page with the search, because a negative result is also a result. You can "play" with him, gradually changing one element in the phrase and observing which of the changes will entail coincidence. Unsuccessful changes can be reverted back. The main thing is to try as many different combinations as possible.
Let's try to replace the word “fast” with “high”:
And if you use a different pretext:
There are matches , but the expression “with the high speed” is used in another situation: instead of high speed, we mean high-speed Wi-Fi. The two lower links are the description of the hotels, they can be ignored.
We will return the preposition “at” and replace the article from a certain to an indefinite one:
Again, a small number of matches.
Finally, we completely get rid of the article. And voila: A
solid number of matches. So the phrase will be used in this version
Symbol * instead of an unknown word in a phrase
Allows you to search for a phrase in which one or more words are unknown. This operator is especially helpful when an unknown word or word is in doubt in the middle of a phrase. With * you can pick up new combinations of words that in themselves, perhaps, would never have crossed my mind.
For example, we want to learn how, besides the obvious “good” or “bad”, you can characterize the user experience, “User Experience (UX)”. If you simply enter the phrase in the search bar, we get more than two million matches, among which there will be combinations of the searched word with all possible parts of speech. In order to select among all the options the figure “adjective + UX” will take half a life.
It is much simpler and more convenient to set the context using the * operator so that the word omitted in the phrase is an adjective. For example: "to enable a * UX".
It turns out that the user experience in English can be characterized by the following adjectives: pleasurable, better, seamless, consistent, new, digital-first, world-class, smooth, great, superior. And these are just the first two pages of the search.
Operators can be combined with each other, each time getting more accurate and creative combinations of words. A complete list of Google operators can be found here .
Mistake 4. Neglecting spelling and punctuation tools
Many editors such as MS Word have built-in spell checking tools. However, if they are not enough, specialized services for checking texts come to the rescue. One of the tools I tested is grammarly.com .
Its advantage is that it checks not only each word individually, but also combinations of words. In addition to recognizing spelling mistakes, it helps to correct the grammar: missing articles, incorrect prepositions and forms of pronouns, incorrect verb tenses.
Mistake: the form of the verb “was” is not consistent with the plural form of the subject “concepts”
The service also made an attempt to check the text in terms of style. The editor “swears” when using stamps, passive voice, too long sentences and often repeated words.
In addition, each error is accompanied by a brief explanation and / or replacement option.
Similar services: Ginger , Hemingway .
However, machine-based validation tools will only help to “comb” your text. The editor will help to completely clean it from errors.
Error 5. Do not show the text to a native speaker when possible
If you work in a large international company, you probably have English-speaking colleagues to whom you can show your text. Perhaps your company even has professional English-language editors. Then you are very lucky. Otherwise, the network has many services like proz.com or translatorscafe.com , where for little money freelancers from the USA or Great Britain will be happy to check your text. In English, such a person is called the capacious word "proofreader".
Using editorial services, take a check on terminology, spelling and punctuation yourself. After all, a person may absolutely not understand the topic that you are writing about. You may also not know anything about the literacy level of the reviewer.
Fortunately, any foreigner, regardless of the level of his professionalism, will immediately notice unsuccessful phrases and cultural discrepancies in the text. Surely many have heard from English-speaking friends: "Sorry, this is just wrong." Ask your assistant to reformulate the bad places so that they do not stand out from the rest of the text.
Sometimes language forums help, where people ask questions to native speakers of a foreign language regarding the use of certain words, for example: forum.wordreference.com or english.stackexchange.com . As a rule, such forums are inhabited by linguists and professional translators, and if you delve deeply into their discussions, you can find the truth.
The user forum.wordreference.com under the nickname "Descendant" asks the forum users the difference between the English words "template" and "pattern" The forum
users explain to the user "Descendant" the interpretation of each word and give examples of usage
conclusions
A high-quality English text written not by a native speaker is not a myth or the fruit of a rare talent. This research, constant self-criticism and the ability to question the first option that came to mind.
For the text to sound “in English”, you must:
- Build your own thematic dictionary - potentially useful words and phrases in context;
- actively work not only with Russian-English, but also with English-language explanatory dictionaries;
- constantly experiment with the compatibility of English words, digging through dozens of Google search pages in search of the most frequently used phrases;
- subtract text using special tools for grammar and syntax errors;
- if possible, involve native speakers to check the text for lexical and cultural discrepancies.
Using this approach when writing English texts, you will cease to feel that knowledge of English works against you. On the contrary, your texts will bring you positive feedback from colleagues and, possibly, career growth. And this, at first glance, overwork will become a chore for you not only when writing working texts in English, but also when compiling resumes, personal emails and other documents.
Hop Hey! Where without advertising our courses :)
Profession front-end developer
From scratch to June in 8 months. We train in practice, help with internships and employment.
Profession web developer
HTML and CSS + JavaScript + backend development of PHP + JavaScript in a browser and Web API.
Profession Product
Manager Business process management at all stages of product creation: from idea to prototype and release.
Profession food designer
Web and mobile interface design, practical UX design, UI analytics.
And besides, until the end of August we have a promotion: 2 courses at a price of 1 →