At Unbabel we have a unique approach to translation: each text submitted by a customer is translated by our Machine Translation system, and then corrected by our community of editors in an online platform. By editing the output of the software, the editors ensure the quality of the translations and confirm that the message is accurate (i.e., has the same meaning as the original), fluent (i.e., can be easily understood and sounds natural) and is in line with the style requested by the clients (i.e. respects their register and terminology). In order to help editors do the best job possible, we provide various types of information:

Customer instructions, which include the identification of the client and his requests to personalize the translation, such as the register that must be used to address the recipient of the message. Following these instructions is vital to deliver translations that match the client’s expectations.
Glossaries, which correspond to specific vocabulary and expressions used by the client, and that must be respected by the editors.
Translation Memories, which correspond to stored segments (expressions, sentences or paragraphs) that have previously been translated and accepted for customer usage. They are useful for ensuring consistency across translations.

We also have Smartcheck, which is an application that checks the grammar, morphology, orthography and style of the translations while being edited. By using a large set of rules, Smartcheck flags words or groups of words that may present some kind of issue.

Finally, in order to deliver the best possible translation, we also provide these guidelines about your language specifications. Please, read them carefully and always follow these instructions in your editions.

2. Grammar

2.1. Agreement

Vietnamese is an isolating language; thus, it has no inflection of any kind.

2.2. Determiners

In general, the functions of determines in Vietnamese are similar to the ones in English, and the main function is tell if the nouns have a general or a specific reference.

Demonstrative determiners

Demonstrative determiners in Vietnamese are right after nouns and can be combined with both plural and singular nouns. In general, there are three types of demonstrative:

- proximal determiners (which refer to a close noun, such as đây or này);

- medial (which refer to a far noun, such as đấy or đó);

- distal (which refer to a very far noun, such as kia).

Examples

Source text: That house is so expensive.

✓ Cái nhà đó mắc lắm.

Source text: This house is so expensive.

✓ Cái nhà này mắc lắm.

Source text: Those houses are so expensive.

✓ Những cái nhà đó mắc lắm.

Source text: These houses are so expensive.

✓ Những cái nhà này mắc lắm.

Possessive determiners

Vietnamese possessive determiners begin with của, such as của tôi (my), của bạn (your), của cô ấy (her), của anh ấy (his), của nó (its), của họ (their). Unlike in English, these determiners never precede nouns, they only stand after nouns.

Example

Source text: My hat

✘ Của tôi nón

✓ Nón của tôi.

Quantifier determiners

Quantifiers (also known as numerators) are words that can occur within a noun phrase before a head noun, which applies for both Vietnamese and English similarly. Vietnamese has quantifier determiners such as mỗi, vài, tất cả, bất kì, etc.

Examples

Source text: Every student needs to sit the test.

✘ Sinh viên mỗi đều phải thi.

✓ Mỗi sinh viên đều phải thi.

Source text: Some students need to sit the test.

✘ Sinh viên vài phải thi.

✓ Vài sinh viên phải thi.

2.3. Prepositions

Vietnamese prepositions fall into two main categories: prepositions of time and prepositions of place.

There are some differences in the way English language and Vietnamese languages use prepositions, which can lead to mistranslation of prepositions in this language pair. More specifically, Vietnamese speakers do not pay attention to trajectory and landmark when describing the position; however, English speakers take these aspects into consideration. For example, English speakers are able to see the differences among ‘on’, ‘over’, ‘on top of’, ‘over’ and ‘above’, but in Vietnamese, we just use trên for all cases. Similarly, English speakers can distinguish ‘under’, ‘underneath’, ‘beneath’, and ‘below’, but in Vietnamese, we use dưới for all. That’s why in Vietnamese speakers it may be difficult to correctly translate English prepositions of place.

Examples

Source text: The cellphone is on the table.

✓ Cái điện thoại nằm trên bàn.

Source text: The cellphone is over the table.

✘ Cái điện thoại nằm trên bàn.

Source text: The cellphone is above the table.

✘ Cái điện thoại nằm trên bàn.

Besides these prepositions, it’s also important to mention other types of prepositions, such as:

- directive (đến);

- aim (để);

- destination (tới);

- means (bßởi, bằng).

2.4. Pronouns

In Vietnamese, pronouns should be forms of address. (The most common forms of address are kinship terms.) Occasionally and confusingly, the same word can be used as a first, second, or third person pronoun, depending on the speaker and the audience. This fact can lead to potential mistranslations.

Examples

Source text: I [old woman] am doing the gardening.

✓ Bà đang làm vườn.

Source text: You [old woman] are doing the gardening.

✓ Bà đang làm vườn.

Source text: She [old woman] is doing the gardening.

✓ Bà đang làm vườn.

It must be stressed here that the first and the second persons — tôi (I), chúng tôi (we), bạn (you-singular) and các bạn (you plural) — are the only pronouns that can be used in polite communication.

2.5. Verbs

Verbs fall into two main subtypes: stative and progressive verbs.

Stative verbs can be preceded by a degree modifier such as rất (very), while progressive verbs can be preceded by the exhortative hãy (let's). The opposite is ungrammatical.

Examples

Source text: Mai is very pretty.

✓ Mai rất xinh.

Source text: Mai is pretty.

✘Mai hãy xinh.

Source text: Let’s read book.

✓ Hãy đọc sách.

Source text: Read book.

✘Rất đọc sách.

There are similarities and distinctions in verb phrases in English and Vietnamese.

The most significant similarity regards the functions and uses of modal verbs: may, should, will (EN); có thể, nên, sẽ (VI).

Examples

Source text: He will come later.

✓ Anh ấy sẽ đến sau.

Source text: You should go home.

✓ Bạn nên về nhà.

The most significant difference between the 2 languages regarding verb phrases is that the concept about tense does not exist in Vietnamese.

3. Orthography

3.1. Abbreviations

Abbreviations in Vietnamese are preceded and followed by whitespaces.

Abbreviations of proper names

When writing in Vietnamese, we can/should abbreviate the titles that precede the names. Abbreviations can be found with a dot, but not necessary. Common examples of these include: ThS, BS, GS, PGS, TS. Sometimes, two titles are used together and connected by a dot, like in ThS.BS or PGS.TS.

Examples

✓ PGS Marc Brunelle

✓ PGS. Marc Brunelle

✓ PGS.TS Marc Brunelle

✓ PGS.TS. Marc Brunelle

✘ PGS-TS Marc Brunelle

Abbreviations of organizations

The rules for abbreviating the names of organizations depend on the context. If an abbreviation is well-known, you can use it the first time that you refer to the organization. Otherwise, you should use it on the second mention.

Other rules for abbreviations

The letters of most abbreviations should be capitalized.

3.2. Capitalization

In general, capitalization rules for English and Vietnamese are similar in proper names (names of people and places), ethnicity, astronomy, holidays, events, disciplines, etc. For these nouns, the first letter of each word should be capitalized.

Examples

✓ Nguyễn Văn Túc

✘ nguyễn văn túc

✓ Nhà Bè

✘ nhà bè

Besides, that, and as expected, the initial letter of the word in every sentence should always be capitalized.

3.3. Compounds

There are two major types of native compounds: coordinate and subordinate compounds.

In Vietnamese coordinative compound nouns, the two constituents are of the same class, with equal functions and without syntactical relationship.

Examples

Source text: grandparents

✓ ông bà [grandfather + grandmother]

Source text: wealthy

✓ giàu có [to be rich + to have]

Source text: to move back and forth

✓ đi lại [to go + to come]

On the other hand, in Vietnamese subordinate compound nouns, the function of their components are unequal. They follow the usual constituent order of Vietnamese in which the head precedes the modifiers.

Examples

Source text: bookstore

✓ nhà sách [house + book]

Source text: tear

✓ nước mắt [water + eye]

Source text: airport

✓ sân bay [yard + fly]

3.4. Diacritics

Vietnamese orthography uses quite a considerable number of diacritics, which belong to 2 different groups: (i) to mark tones; (ii) to create new letters that represent distinct vowels.

Group 1 (to mark tones)

There are 6 tones in Vietnamese. The midlevel tone is represented by an absent of marking, so it needs only 5 diacritics to mark 6 tones.

Native Orthography	Tone	Meaning
ta	ngang (mid level)	I, me, we, us
tà	huyền (low falling)	evil spirit
tá	sắc (mid rising)	dozen
tả	hỏi (mid falling harsh)	to describe
tã	ngã (mid rising, glottalized)	diaper
tạ	nặng (mid falling, glottalized)	weights/dumb-bell

Group 2 (to create new letters that represent distinct vowels)

In general, Vietnamese distinguishes nine vowel qualities /a ɛ e i ɔ o ɤ u ɯ/ and three falling diphthongs /iə uə ɯə/. Obviously, cardinal vowel letters are not enough. So, Vietnamese orthography uses diacritics to create new letters that represents distinct sounds.

There are also 6 vowel letters with diacritics: ă â ê ô ơ ư (compared with 6 vowel letters without diacritics a, e, i, o, u, y).

3.5. Foreign words

Recently, there’s been a rising number of foreign words in Vietnamese. Among them, a considerable amount is from English and French. They can be considered non-integrated loanwords, including American automobile names, names of electronic devices, etc.

When dealing with foreign words, translators/editors should always check the clients’ instruction to see if there’s any information regarding the way they should be treated in the translations. If there is no instruction, foreign words can be translated, localized or kept unchanged, depending on the nature of the term, the context or the style.

Example

Source text: laptop

✓ máy tính xách tay

✓ laptop

✓ láp tóp [less popular]

3.6. Numerals

Regarding numerals format (written in numbers or words), you must always respect the source text: if they are written as digits in the source text, this should be maintained in the translation; on the other hand, if they are written as words, they should be translated to the target language.

The format of integers and decimal numbers in Vietnamese can be described as the following:

Natural numbers larger than 999 might or might not have a thousand marker (a dot). For numbers larger than 999.999 the marker is mandatory, unless the number has only zeros after the initial number.

Examples

✓ 9.999.999

✓ 9000000

✘9999999

✓ 1.000

✓ 1000

✘1,000

✘1 000

Unlike in English, Vietnamese uses a comma to mark decimal places.

Example

Source text: 2.5

✓ 2,5

✘2.5

3.7. Symbols

In Vietnamese, the language rules regarding the use of symbols (%, /, |, etc.) are similar to the ones in English, i.e. there are no whitespaces between the symbol and the numbers.

Examples

✓ 100%

✘ 100 %

✓ 17/3

✘ 17 / 3 (VI)

4. Punctuation

4.1. How to use punctuation marks

Punctuation marks in Vietnamese should be used as in the table below:

Punctuation Type	Symbol	Example Sentence	Uses
Exclamation mark	!	Source text: What a beautiful city! ✓ Thành phố đẹp quá!	The use of "!" is the same as in English.
Question mark	?	Source text: Why did you come late? ✓ Tại sao anh đến trễ?	The use of "?" is the same as in English.
Period	.	Source text: I like Saigon. ✓ Tôi thích Sài Gòn. Source text: Money. All he thinks about is money. ✓ Tiền. Anh ta chỉ nghĩ đến tiền.	Full stops are used at the end of sentences as in English.
Ellipsis	…	Source text: I miss the old days… ✓ Tôi nhớ ngày xưa…	This punctuation is used to indicate emotional overwhelm, unfinished thoughts or some thoughts intentionally left out.
Semicolon	;	Source text: Some people spend their time watching the film; some others read the novel. ✓ Có người dành thời gian đi xem phim đó; một số khác đọc truyện.	The use of ";" is the same as in English. It is usually used when each of the two parts could form grammatical sentences on their own. A semicolon can also separate the things in a list.
Dash	—	Source text: You can call me from 8am to 4 pm. ✓ Anh có thể gọi tôi 8 giờ sáng — 4 giờ chiều. Source text: The school, which is 300 meters away from my house, has just been closed. ✓ Trường học — cách nhà tôi 300 mét — vừa bị đóng cửa. Source text: I am reading the economic geography map of Ba Ria — Vung Tau province. ✓ Tôi đang xem bản đồ địa lí — kinh tế của tỉnh Bà Rịa — Vũng Tàu. Source text:— This English centre has more than 200 teachers. ✓— Trung tâm tiếng Anh này có hơn 200 giáo viên.	It is used to elaborate a range (first example). It is also used for insertion and/or highlighting additional information (second example). It is used to connect two elements that are closely related or work together as a unit (third example). It can also be used to introduce lists following a statement or write dialogues (fourth example). White spaces are generally placed before and after the dash, except when it marks lists or dialogues, in which case there is only one whitespace after the dash.
Hyphen	-	Source text: He isn’t afraid of anyone, except you-know-who. ✓ Anh ta chằng sợ ai, trừ người-mà-ai-cũng-biết-là-ai-đấy. Source text: I have a friend who lives in Argentina. ✓ Tôi có một người bạn sống ở Ác-hen-ti-na.	It is used to form a compound noun (first example). It helps in breaking down the syllables of foreign words for better pronunciation (second example). There is no whitespace before and after the hyphen.
Colon	:	Source text: There are some cities that I really like: Toronto, Nam Định, Sài Gòn. ✓ Có những thành phố tôi rất thích: Toronto, Nam Định, Sài Gòn.	The colon is used to introduce a set of items. There is only one whitespace after the colon.
Comma	,	Source text: In those days, I lived in Sài Gòn, next to a river, and I went swimming there every afternoon. ✓ Hồi đó, tôi sống ở Sài Gòn, kế bên một con sông và tôi thường tắm sông mỗi buổi chiều.	It is used to breakdown long sentences and clauses, similar to its use in English. But according to Vietnamese grammar rules, don't use comma before và (and). There is no whitespace between the brackets (both opening and closing) and the text inside them. Whitespaces are placed between the brackets and the text outside them.
Quotation marks	" "	Source text: I sometimes remember mei saying "Oh the good old days". ✓Tôi thỉnh thoảng nhớ Mi hay nói "Những ngày xưa thân ái".	Quotation marks are used in pairs (“ ”) to quote a word, a phrase or a speech. There is no space between the quotation marks (both opening and closing) and the text inside them.
Slash	/	Source text: Tuc, Uyen or Mai must take the responsibility for this. ✓Tuc/Uyen/Mai phải chịu trách nhiệm việc này.	Slashes are used to indicate alternative concepts. There are no whitespaces before and after the slash.
Round brackets	( )	Source text: Bui Thi Xuan school (used to be named Nguyen Ba Tong school) has trained a lot of artists. ✓Trường Bùi Thị Xuân (từng có tên là trường Nguyễn Bá Tòng) đã đào tạo nhiều nghệ sĩ.	Round brackets are mainly used to separate extra information.

4.2. Punctuation in greetings and closings

In greetings, a comma should be used after the salutation phrase (after the greeting and the name).

Example

Source text: Dear Mr. Smith, [formal]

✘ Kính gửi ông Smith

✘ Kính gửi ông Smith.

✘ Kính gửi ông Smith;

✘ Kính gửi ông Smith:

✓ Kính gửi ông Smith,

Source text: Dear John, [formal]

✘ Xin chào John

✘ Xin chào John.

✘ Xin chào John;

✘ Xin chào John:

✓ Xin chào John,

Source text: Hello John, [informal]

✘ Chào John

✘ Chào John.

✘ Chào John;

✘ Chào John:

✓ Chào John,

✓ John thân mến,

In closings, a comma should be used after the closing phrase.

Examples

Source text: Kind Regards, [formal]

✘ Trân trọng.

✓ Trân trọng,

Source text: Yours faithfully, [formal]

✘ Kính thư.

✓ Kính thư,

5. Register

This does not apply to Vietnamese language. However, as noted in the Pronouns’ section, the first and the second persons — tôi (I), chúng tôi (we), bạn (you-singular) and các bạn (you plural) — are the only pronouns that can be used in polite communication.

6. Localization challenges

6.1. Proper nouns

Proper nouns refer to unique entities, such as persons, places, organizations, brands, events, etc. As foreign proper nouns are concerned, languages may adopt different rules regarding whether they should be translated or kept in the original language. When editing a text, you should follow your languages rules for all different types of proper nouns listed below. However, please note that if there is a glossary provided by the client that includes these types of units, you should always apply the glossary items.

In Vietnamese language, in general, there are two ways of representing foreign names:

Localizing

This is a special case of transliteration that involves the conversion of a foreign name in the Latin alphabet into Vietnamese spelling to show the Vietnamese pronunciation. This traditional way should comply with the Vietnamese rules of spelling and pronunciation. Please note that there can exist some variability among localized names.

Example

Source text: Canada

✓ Ca-na-đa

✓ Gia Nã Đại

Keeping the proper nouns unchanged/untranslated

This is becoming more and more popular in the Vietnamese news media. This method does not show any variability. However, this might require some basic knowledge of English and its pronunciation.

Examples

Source text: Cambridge; Unilever; Obama; Google

✓ Cambridge; Unilever; Obama; Google

For translation from English, the choice of method depends on the translator, the editor, the context, and the style.

However, in general, for organizations like ‘University of Ottawa’, the proper name ‘Ottawa’ can be localized or kept unchanged, while the organization type (‘University’) must be translated into Vietnamese (Trường đại học).

6.2. Acronyms and initials

Acronyms and initials can be a problem for Vietnamese translators, and they could easily derail a smooth translation or interpretation. Please note that when the target acronyms exist in Vietnamese, you should translate it. On the other hand, when the acronym doesn’t exist in Vietnamese, you should keep the source abbreviation.

Examples

Source text: aids

✓ si đa

Source text: WTO

✓ WTO

6.3. Date format

In Vietnamese, we can interpret a date using the format: dd/mm/yy(yy) or dd-mm-yy(yy).

Vietnamese writes ngày… tháng… năm… to require the date information. As can be found in common Vietnamese official forms, if the year is needed, it simply writes năm (‘year’), and in most of the cases, 4-digit years should be provided unless only 2 spaces/underscores are given.

Regarding months in Vietnamese, another official way to say tháng Bốn (April) is tháng Tư, which is also more commonly used.

Contrary to English, Vietnamese is not case sensitive: ‘July’ can be Tháng Tám, tháng Tám or tháng tám (actually, the first is not very popular).

Examples

Source text: 03/21/14

✘03/21/14

✓ 21/03/2014

Source text: 03-21-14

✘03-21-14

✓ 21-03-2014

Source text: March 21, 2014

✓ ngày 21 tháng Ba năm 2014

6.4. Time format

In Vietnamese, 12-hour system is more popular than 24-hour system.

For “hh”, prefix “0” is not mandatory: 01:09:08 can be written as 1:09:08.

The format of time in Vietnamese is:

giờ (‘hour’) phút (‘minute’) giây (‘second’);
giờ (‘hour’) phút (‘minute’);
each value separated by a colon (e.g. 1:09:08).

Any of the formats above can also be succeeded with:

buổi sáng (‘morning’), buổi chiều (‘afternoon’) or buổi tối (‘evening’);
sáng (‘morning’), chiều (‘afternoon’) or tối (‘evening’).

Abbreviations of hours, minutes, seconds are not commonly used in Vietnamese.

Vietnamese	English
7:30 sáng or 07:30 sáng	7:30 am
2:10 chiều or 02:10 chiều	2:10 pm
7:30 tối or 07:30 tối or 19:30	7:30 pm
7:30:45 sáng or 07:30:45 sáng	7:30:45 am
7:30:45 tối or 07:30:45 tối or 19:30:45	7:30:45 pm

6.5. Measures

Measures should always keep the format of the source text and should never be converted. You should only translate them when they have an equivalent term in your language.

The Metric system has been used in Vietnamese, which means that we use meter for length, kilogram for mass, second for time and ampere as an electrical unit, for example.

In general, Vietnamese language does not translate all measure terms. Some terms have been translated (‘second’ (EN) to giây (VI)), while others have been localized (‘meter’ (EN) to mét (VI)) or kept untranslated.

It is important to note that abbreviations should be kept (e.g. 2 ft, 20 cm).

Examples

Source text: 5 meters

✓ 5 mét

Source text: 5 cm

✘5 xăng-ti-mét

✓ 5 cm

Source text: 5 hours

✓ 5 giờ

6.6. Currency

Currency values should be left as they are in the source text, only translating the currencies.

Example

Source text: 5 Canadian dollars

✘ năm đô-la Ca-na-đa

✓ 5 đô-la Ca-na-đa

Do not translate currency initials (USD, GBP, RUB, INR, DKK, NOK, etc.) as they are a convention accepted worldwide.

Example

Source text: 5 USD

✘5 đô-la Mỹ

✓ 5 USD

The currency symbols (€, $, £, etc.) are placed right before the numbers (without a whitespace).

Example

Source text: $5

✘ 5 $

✘ 5$

✘ $ 5

✓ $5

7. Tricky cases

Please note that politeness in Vietnamese source texts may be lost in translation.

English is a quite polite language. For example, words such as ‘would’, ‘could’, ‘can’, ‘may’, ‘might’, etc. are often used to soften requests or to ask for permission. That can be one reason why word-for-word translation could not work well in VI-EN translations. When we translate a polite request from Vietnamese to English, the English text should give the other person a choice, instead of telling someone to do that, as in an order.

Examples

Vui lòng mở cửa giùm tôi. [polite in VI] → Please, open the door for me. [not as polite in EN as in VI]

Vui lòng mở cửa giùm tôi. [polite in VI] → Could you open the door for me, please? [polite in EN]

Vui lòng mở cửa giùm tôi. [polite in VI] → Could you please open the door for me? [polite in EN]

8. Most frequent errors

Lexical Selection

Sometimes, the term selected is not correct for the context or is not accurate to convey the meaning of the original text. In fact, choosing words which are correct and appropriate for a specific context can be complicated for some Vietnamese translators when speaking or writing in English. In order to avoid this sort of mistakes, we need to acquire a large word bank, synonyms and other meaning relation for some words.

Examples

Source text: Visit University of Ottawa during Open House.

✘ Thăm trường đại học Ottawa trong ngày khai trường.

✓ Thăm trường đại học Ottawa trong ngày mở cửa tham quan.

Source text: Tôi có thể thực hiện ba bài khảo sát không?

✘ Can I make three surveys?

✓ Can I do three surveys?

Literal Translation

In this case, the translation is too strict to the source text, which may cause problems of interpretation. Consequently, the target content does not accurately represent the source content (mistranslation).

Example

Source text: Have your company had a new version yet?

✓ Chỗ bạn có phiên bản mới hả?

Tense/Mood/Aspect

A verbal form displays the wrong tense, mood, or aspect. Generally, this is a word form problem, and the issues are related to the grammar or syntax of the text without affecting the original meaning of the text.

Examples

Source text: Đã xảy ra vài trục trặc.

✘ Some problems occur.

✓ Some problems occurred.

✓ Some problems have occurred.