Ukrainian translation services

Ukrainian translation services Diskusija offers

Diskusija’s offering includes expert Ukrainian translation services, performed by our highly-qualified native Ukrainian translators. What’s more, our Ukrainian translation projects are overseen by our team of bright, talented project managers, who are supported by our proven quality assurance processes.

We only work with experts, which means any content you send to us, be it marketing, legal, financial, technical or otherwise, will only be assigned to someone who’s highly qualified to work with materials from these specialist fields.

When it comes to Ukrainian translation, we usually work in the following language pairs:

  • English to Ukrainian
  • German to Ukrainian
  • French to Ukrainian

We also work with many other combinations, however, so if you don’t see the combination you need here, get in touch and we’ll find a solution that’s right for you!

Ukrainian translation services

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About the Ukrainian language

The Ukrainian language (in Ukrainian: українська мова, ukrayins’ka mova) is an East Slavic language which is spoken by an estimated 42 to 47 million people around the world. Approximately 37.5 million of them are in Ukraine. Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine.

Ukrainian is an interesting language because of its history: there were many rulers of the present territory of Ukraine, the language and culture faced a variety of outside influences, including Lithuanian, Polish, Turkic and Russian, and some rulers repressed the language, but the distinct language persisted.

In the early periods of development, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages were called Ruthenian as the territory of present-day Ukraine and Belarus was named Ruthenia.

Modern language: alphabet, vocabulary, spelling, grammar

Contemporary Ukrainian is written using a form of the Cyrillic alphabet.

It is most closely related to Belarusian, and it has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Russian as well. But there are distinct features that are shared with other Slavic languages, such as Polish and Slovak.

The language has a very rich grammatical structure that is inherited from Indo-European languages. Nouns have grammatical gender, number, and seven declensions – Ukrainian has not lost its vocative case, which makes it different from Russian. Ukrainian adjectives agree with the noun in case, number, and gender. Verbs have 2 aspects, 3 tenses, 3 moods, and 2 voices.

History of the Ukrainian language

In the earliest phase, Ukrainian underwent the same development as other Slavic languages – after the migration of the Slavs in Eastern Europe in the sixth century AD, three main groups of Slavic languages emerged by the tenth century: Western, Southern and Eastern. Ukrainian, along with Belarusian and Russian, descend from the latter group.

There are several theories about the later development of Ukrainian. One theory suggests it was because of foreign influence, others tell a more radical story: that the three East Slavic languages existed as distinct languages after their separation from the Proto-Slavic language.

The most widely accepted theory by linguists outside Ukraine says all three languages developed their distinct characteristics naturally. Until the 12th or 13th century, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian were almost indistinguishable. This was during the Kievan Rus state period. After its fall, Ukrainian started to move further away from Russian. In the 14th century, the south-western territories of modern Ukraine came under the power of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The eastern part, in turn, was under the rule of the Tatars and was later called the Tsardom of Muscovy. So the language of the two regions evolved in isolation from each other for the next four centuries.

A feature of rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was that it allowed wide autonomy of the state, language and culture. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Old Slavic became the chancellery language and gradually evolved into Ruthenian.

After the Union of Lublin in the 16th century that formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the territory of Ukraine fell under Polish administration. This was marked by attempts at assimilation and Polonisation. The Ukrainian upper class learned Polish, while the lower classes were less affected despite significant pressure and due to their low literacy rate.

From the mid-17th century, part of Ukraine’s territory came under the domination of the Russian Empire. And from the 18th century, the eastern part of Ukraine’s territory was incorporated into the Russian Empire.

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