Translate English to Czech

Tips for English to Czech translation

Czech has seven grammatical cases, and every noun, adjective, and pronoun changes its ending based on its role in the sentence. The word for “city” (město) becomes města in genitive, městu in dative, and městem in instrumental. These changes carry grammatical information that English expresses through word order and prepositions.

The letters ř, ž, š, č, and ě are standard Czech letters, not decorations. The hacek (the small v-shape above a consonant) changes the sound: s becomes sh, c becomes ch, z becomes zh. The letter ř is unique to Czech and represents a sound that combines a rolled R with a ZH. It appears in the name of composer Dvořák and is considered one of the hardest sounds in any European language.

Czech word order is flexible because case endings already show grammatical relationships. The verb does not need to be in a fixed position, and the same sentence can be rearranged for emphasis. “Peter reads a book” and “a book Peter reads” are both grammatically correct in Czech, with different emphasis. Translators generally produce standard English word order, which is correct but may lose the original emphasis.

Czech distinguishes between formal and informal address. Ty is informal (friends, family, children), while vy (lowercase) is formal for one person and vy is also used for plural. In professional settings, Czechs use the formal form even with colleagues they see daily. Translated English loses this distinction since English only has “you.”