English - Vietnamese translation

Choosing the right relationship and detail in Vietnamese messages

English ‘you’ does not identify a Vietnamese relationship

Vietnamese can use words associated with family relationships to address people who are not relatives. The appropriate choice can depend on relative age, gender and the relationship between the people speaking. An English source that repeats you throughout a conversation leaves those choices largely unstated.

For instance, ‘Thank you’ can be ‘Cảm ơn anh’ when addressing a man for whom anh is the established form of address. In another exchange, the recipient term would change. Do not select anh merely because the English reader is male, and do not interpret its presence as proof that the people are brothers. For an ongoing customer conversation, preserve the address terms the participants already use rather than assigning a new relationship in every reply.

The speaker’s own form of reference can change with that relationship too. A template written in one person’s voice may therefore need adjustment when another colleague sends it. Saving a useful sentence is helpful, but keep a note of who is speaking to whom when the sentence contains relational address.

Give quantities an object and the appropriate classifier

Vietnamese uses classifiers in many expressions that count or identify things. English ‘two books’ can be ‘hai cuốn sách’: the number comes before the classifier and noun. The classifier is not another book or an extra item in the order. It helps form the Vietnamese expression for the things being counted.

An English shopping message should say whether a number refers to individual products, packages or containers. If you ask for two without stating what two counts, a translator cannot reliably infer the unit. In a message about several objects, repeat the item name when the reference changes rather than expecting a classifier chosen for the earlier object to fit everything that follows.

Keep progress and spelling visible

Vietnamese verbs do not take an English -ing ending to express an action in progress. Separate words and the sentence’s circumstances convey that information. ‘I am working’ can be ‘Tôi đang làm việc.’ The progressive meaning does not depend on changing the final letters of the main action word as English does.

When translating a status update, distinguish doing a task now from having completed it or planning to do it later. Do not remove the English words that establish that distinction just to make the input shorter. An acknowledgment of a completed action and a report that work is still under way can require different responses from the recipient.

Keep Vietnamese tone marks and vowel marks in the final text. They are part of ordinary spelling, not decoration that can be removed for a cleaner-looking message. Vietnamese uses Latin letters, but that visual familiarity does not make an unaccented rewrite equivalent to the original. This is especially important for names, places and short instructions where the surrounding sentence offers little help in recovering an altered word.