Talk:English to Polish

I'm not really sure what the conventions are here, so I'm going to use the main article for (what I consider to be fact), and this page for opinion.

Articles: I can't think of more than a handful of examples where it's even possible to correctly determine which article to use (a/an or the). Polish speakers of English typically omit articles, so IMO it's better to also omit them; that is, not to aim to translate from Polish to English better than the Polish do. :) -- Jimregan 09:56, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Aye, I'd agree there, but if you can think of any ways at all to determine, it would be good :) And yes, your conventions sound good. - Francis Tyers 10:14, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Word order: I realise it's also possible in English to change the word order in the example I gave, by saying "It's you I love", but I'm ignoring that, because that adds a predicate (which in Polish would be "To Ciebie kocham" -- Jimregan 10:44, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Yep, I was thinking the same thing (the "It's you I love" example), but you're right the canonical order in Polish is more flexible. - Francis Tyers 11:53, 10 October 2007 (BST)

I presume we're aiming for description, rather than prescription? Should I make a list of common deviations from "proper" grammar? -- Jimregan 11:10, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Well, certainly we shouldn't be prescriptivist, but I think if we deal with the standard written form of the language first, e.g. that found in newspaper articles, etc. it would be best. But of course it depends on the domain in which you intend to translate to/from. - Francis Tyers 11:52, 10 October 2007 (BST)