Don't translate to get your message across

Saying what you mean so that it sounds natural is one of the challenges of writing in English for your business.

And that means not translating. Translation not only slows you down, it also makes it much harder to sound natural.

Sounding natural involves hitting the right degree of formality, not too business-speak but not overly casual either.

It means writing in a conversational tone using:

contractions (can’t, don’t not cannot, do not)
everyday vocab (begin not commence)
phrasal verbs (put off not postpone),
colloquial expressions

An easy way to develop a more natural style is active copying of the kinds of texts you’re aiming to write. This helps you to become more aware of natural turns of phrases in English.

But trying to sound natural via translation doesn’t work so well.

Of course there’s a place for your mother tongue and that’s during brainstorming, which we’ll talk about next week.

Would you like help in getting your message across in English more quickly and easily? Get in touch.

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