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How to translate Russian messages: writing to Russian-speaking customers without Russian

Russian is the business language far beyond Russia: in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and much of the Caucasus, customers and suppliers often write in Russian, on WhatsApp, Telegram or email. You can do business with them without speaking Russian, as long as you know how Cyrillic, forms of address and translation pitfalls work.

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Cyrillic: reading and writing

Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. To understand an incoming message you do not need to read the letters: copy it into a translator or translate it with one tap. The hard part is replying: with a Latin keyboard you cannot type a name, an address or a product code the way the other side writes it.

So you need either a tool that translates your reply into Russian, or a keyboard that has a Russian layout. Copying names, cities and product names exactly as the customer wrote them also prevents misspellings.

Write sentences that translate well

Machine translation works best with short, clear sentences. Long sentences with several clauses are where meaning drifts.

A few rules that help:

  • One idea per sentence: “We ship the sample today. Delivery takes three days.”
  • Skip idioms and jokes; write “I will review it” instead of “I'll take a look”.
  • Make the subject explicit: Russian verbs change with the person, and a vague subject gives a wrong translation.
  • Avoid abbreviations: write “pieces”, not “pcs”.

Address: first name and patronymic

In formal Russian, people are addressed by first name and patronymic, for example “Иван Петрович”. If your contact introduced themselves that way, use the same form; translators do not always turn “Dear Mr. Ivanov” into a natural Russian greeting.

Russian also has a formal “you” (вы) and an informal one (ты). In business always use the formal one, and glance at the translation to see that it says “вы”.

Numbers, dates and currency

Russian uses a comma as the decimal separator and a space for thousands: 1 250,50. Always name the currency: USD, EUR, рубль or тенге.

Write dates with the month name: “5 November” becomes “5 ноября”, while “05.11” can be read differently. Give times in 24-hour format with the time zone; Moscow, Almaty and Tashkent are in different zones.

Voice messages and Telegram

Russian-speaking customers send a lot of voice messages. A voice message has to be transcribed before it can be translated; if you did not understand an important one, asking for the same thing in writing is usually the quickest fix.

Telegram is as common as WhatsApp in this market. Telegram's own Translate button helps you read incoming messages; for replies, a translating keyboard works in every app.

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