Post by SLD member Mikhail Yashchuk
An LSP asked me to create their first Belarusian style guide to ensure consistency and adherence to established rules. They needed a universal guide that would work for all clients who do not have their own guidelines.
Challenge 1: Defining the goal
The goal was not to teach linguists the Belarusian language, cite every rule, or provide answers to all possible questions. The goal was to ensure translation consistency and address difficult and ambiguous cases.
Challenge 2: Maintaining objectivity
I decided that the style guide needed to include official, verifiable information and minimize personal preferences or third-party guidelines.
Challenge 3: Deciding where to start
As a starting point, I chose the 2008 Belarusian Orthography and Punctuation Law because, according to Article 2, “it must be followed in all spheres and cases of written Belarusian language usage.”
Challenge 4: Filtering content
I reviewed the law and took notes on elements that could be complicated for linguists. A full review of the 64-page document would be impractical for most readers, so I had to select only the most relevant sections.
Challenge 5: Choosing primary reference materials
While the law is extensive and outlines orthography and punctuation, translators encounter issues in their everyday work that are outside its scope.
Therefore, the next obvious sources were dictionaries. I selected the official “primary” ones:
- The Explanatory Dictionary of the Belarusian Literary Language
- The Orthographic Dictionary of the Belarusian Language
- The Grammatical Dictionary of Nouns
- The Grammatical Dictionary of Verbs
- The Grammatical Dictionary of Adjectives, Pronouns, Numerals, and Adverbs
I chose these because, in my experience as an editor, word choice, spelling and grammar mistakes—including morphological and syntactical errors—are among the most frequent issues in Belarusian translations.
Unfortunately, neither the law nor the dictionaries covered certain points, such as syntactic agreement between numerals and other parts of speech or typographical rules for punctuation marks and symbols. Consequently, I had to turn to official standards and textbooks for schools and universities.
Challenge 6: Evaluating limitations
There were some valuable “gold-standard” resources that nevertheless required careful handling. These included materials published before 2008, prior to the adoption of the updated orthography and punctuation rules.
Such resources also included translation dictionaries. Although they are useful in translation work, they are not official “primary” dictionaries and are less comprehensive than explanatory dictionaries.
The National Corpus of the Belarusian Language also required caution. While it is a powerful tool for checking collocations and word usage, it contains literary works where authors sometimes used lexical, grammatical, or punctuation choices that are permissible for famous writers but violate modern language rules. Therefore, the National Corpus needed to be approached with caution and careful selection of the necessary sub-corpora, publication years, and text styles.
Challenge 7: Promoting linguistic richness
I added a recommendation that, when appropriate for a specific project, linguists should choose authentic Belarusian synonyms over calques. This would enrich the lexicon and highlight the beauty and unique character of the language. As Ihar Kapylou, Head of the Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the editor of The Explanatory Dictionary of the Belarusian Literary Language (2022), noted, “It is necessary to promote such [authentic] words, because this is our historical wealth.”
Challenge 8: Encouraging compliance
The goal was to provide actionable, concise, and easy-to-follow guidelines. To achieve this, I used short, straightforward sentences and paragraphs and avoided overexplaining. I also provided examples of incorrect and correct usage using distinct formatting.
The result was a clear and practicable 28-section Belarusian style guide that covers tricky cases and helps translators avoid common mistakes.
Mikhail Yashchuk is a seasoned linguist. In 2002, he received his university degree in English, and six years later, he entered the translation industry. Mikhail is an ATA member, a sworn translator in English, Belarusian, and Russian certified by the Belarusian Notary Chamber, and a Belarusian language lead. He may be contacted at mikhail@lexicon.biz.
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