BabelFish

Russian Translator

Translate English to Russian, free and instantly.

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Russian is written in Cyrillic, which is the first hurdle for English speakers: the alphabet looks familiar in places and is misleading in most of them. Р is an R sound, С is an S, and В is a V. Translations here show a Latin transliteration underneath the Cyrillic, so you can read the result aloud without learning the script first.

Two things catch people out. Russian has no articles — no a, no the — so a literal translation back into English often reads clipped. And verbs come in pairs depending on whether the action was completed, which is a distinction English handles with tense and Russian handles with a different word entirely. Machine translation is generally sound on both, but it will pick one reading and not tell you it chose.

Formality matters as much as it does in French or German: ты for people you know, вы for everyone else and for anyone older or senior to you. Getting it wrong is not offensive so much as oddly familiar.

Common phrases in Russian

Translated and corrected by speakers.

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