French: the most obvious feature of French texts is the large number of apostrophes, marking the elision of vowels. The most common are l’, d’ and s’ at the start of a word.
Accents and diacritics used are: é, è, à, ç, ù, ê, î, û, ï, ë — and note that à can be a single word.
In Europe, French is an official language in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland, and for certain purposes also in Jersey/Channel Islands.
Italian: almost all Italian words end in a vowel. Most typical characters: ò at the end of words (not found in French at all) and è as a single word (also not found in French). Another noteworthy feature is initial capitals for the forms of the polite ‘you’ even when in the middle of a sentence, e.g. Lei, Loro.
Italian is also an official language of Switzerland.
Romanian has no ç (unlike French) but does put a comma under ș and ț. It also frequently uses a circumflex on î and â and a breve on ă.
Accented characters used in Romanian: â, ă, î, ș, ț.
Romanian is also the official language of Moldova, although its official name there is ‘Moldovan’ (limbă moldovenească, sometimes also translated as ‘Moldavian’) according to its Constitution. It uses Romanian spelling.
Russian is also a major language in Moldova. In the selfdeclared Republic of Transdniestria, Romanian is still written in the Cyrillic script as in Soviet times and has official status alongside Russian and Ukrainian.
How to Translate – English Translation Guide in European Union
Your Essential Guide to English Translation in the European Union
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