Translationese is language whose words may be Catalan but whose habitual architecture still belongs to the source text. The problem is not the mere presence of a passive, nominalization, or cognate: Catalan has all three. Translationese appears when a translator reproduces English or Spanish choices automatically instead of rebuilding agency, emphasis, reference, and rhythm for a Catalan reader.
This is also why a regional form is not translationese simply because it resembles Spanish. Valencian este, for example, belongs to a living Catalan system. Contact-induced colloquialisms, standard alternatives, and genuine calques require different labels. Diagnose a construction by its history, distribution, register, and work in the sentence—not by visual resemblance alone.
The practical counterpart is editing for cohesion and rhythm: once a calque is removed, the revised paragraph still needs a clear reference chain.
Rebuild the information structure
English often requires an overt subject and strongly favors subject–verb order. Catalan can omit an understood subject, place a new subject after the verb, or introduce a location with hi. Repeating pronouns can accidentally create contrast.
La Marta va revisar l'informe. Després, el va enviar a l'equip.
Marta reviewed the report. Then she sent it to the team. (The omitted subject remains Marta; el maintains the report as a reference chain.)
A la sala hi havia tres persones que esperaven.
There were three people waiting in the room. (Locative hi and postverbal new information.)
Compare Ella el va enviar with El va enviar. The overt ella naturally answers “she, rather than someone else.” English she does not automatically license Catalan ella.
L'informe, ja l'ha revisat la directora; els annexos, encara no.
The report, the director has already reviewed; the appendices, not yet. (Topic fronting plus a resumptive clitic.)
That order is not a word-for-word template either. It is appropriate because the two objects are contrasted. Naturalization means recovering the intended focus, not applying a rule that “Catalan always fronts objects.”
Passives: grammatical, but not the default answer
The passive with ser + participle is fully grammatical and useful when the patient must remain the topic or when the agent is secondary.
La llei va ser aprovada pel Parlament després d'un debat de dotze hores.
The law was passed by Parliament after a twelve-hour debate. (Acceptable formal passive; the law is the continuing topic.)
English uses passives much more freely, including long sequences whose repeated per part de phrases feel heavy in Catalan. If the agent matters, the active is often clearer.
El Parlament va aprovar la llei després d'un debat de dotze hores.
Parliament passed the law after a twelve-hour debate. (Active alternative with visible agency.)
Catalan also uses pronominal constructions when the event or rule matters more than a particular agent: S'han publicat els resultats; No es permet fumar. Do not add an agent phrase to an es construction as if it were an English passive.
Els resultats es publicaran divendres al web del centre.
The results will be published on the centre's website on Friday. (Natural event-focused pronominal construction.)
Nominal style: distinguish terminology from fog
English administrative and academic prose often turns processes into nouns: implementation, evaluation, provision. Catalan technical terms may genuinely require implementació or avaluació. The warning concerns stacked support verbs and empty nouns, not a ban on abstraction.
L'equip avaluarà les propostes al setembre.
The team will evaluate the proposals in September. (Direct verb.)
L'avaluació de les propostes seguirà els criteris de l'annex.
The evaluation of the proposals will follow the criteria in the appendix. (Nominalization justified because the evaluation itself is the topic.)
Compare these with procedir a la realització de l'avaluació. That chain contributes no needed distinction. Formal Catalan is not created by replacing avaluar with four words.
Connectors: map the relation, not the token
English actually, eventually, however, and therefore and Spanish pues, sin embargo, and en cuanto a do not each have one automatic Catalan equivalent. Choose according to discourse function.
| Source temptation | Usual Catalan choices | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| English actually | de fet, en realitat | evidence or correction? |
| English eventually | finalment, al capdavall, amb el temps | final outcome or gradual development? |
| English however | però, tanmateix, ara bé | local contrast, formal counterpoint, or qualification? |
| Spanish pues | doncs, perquè, bé, or nothing | conclusion, cause, turn management? |
Al principi s'hi oposava; amb el temps, però, va canviar d'opinió.
At first she opposed it; eventually, however, she changed her mind.
Here amb el temps renders gradual eventuality and però carries contrast. Eventualment in Catalan means “if the occasion arises / possibly” in many formal uses; it is not the safe automatic equivalent of English eventually.
Connector overload is another form of translationese. If chronology or syntax already makes the relation clear, inserting consegüentment, així mateix, and no obstant això into every sentence makes the prose mechanical.
Collocations and prepositions
A calque often reveals itself not through an impossible word but through an unlikely partnership. Standard formal Catalan uses adonar-se de, d'acord amb, basar-se en, sol·licitar una plaça, and prendre una decisió.
Em vaig adonar que faltava una pàgina i vaig demanar que l'afegissin.
I realized that a page was missing and asked for it to be added.
D'acord amb les dades, l'augment es concentra als municipis costaners.
According to the data, the increase is concentrated in coastal municipalities.
Forms such as donar-se compte or abstract en base a are widespread under Spanish influence but are not the recommended choices in edited standard Catalan. By contrast, resemblance alone proves nothing: realitzar and tenir lloc are standard, though overusing them can still make a text vague.
English also encourages possessives where Catalan prefers a definite article and a clitic when the possessor is obvious.
Es va posar les mans a les butxaques i se'n va anar.
She put her hands in her pockets and left. (Not normally les seves mans / les seves butxaques.)
Gerunds and copied event chains
In edited standard Catalan, the gerund normally describes an action simultaneous with or prior to the main event, or the manner in which it occurs. A gerund that merely introduces a later consequence is a common calque reinforced by Spanish bureaucratic prose.
Va sortir de casa corrent per no perdre l'autobús.
She ran out of the house so as not to miss the bus. (The running describes how she left.)
La Berta va relliscar a l'escala i es va trencar el canell.
Berta slipped on the stairs and broke her wrist. (Two successive events; coordination is clearer.)
The second should not be va relliscar, trencant-se el canell in careful prose if the break is the subsequent result. The issue is temporal logic, not a general hostility to gerunds.
Spoken, written, formal, and plain versions
Consider an English project update translated for three settings:
Al final no ho podrem tenir avui; ens falta comprovar dues dades.
We won't be able to have it ready today after all; we still have two figures to check. (informal spoken)
L'informe no es podrà lliurar avui perquè encara cal verificar dues dades.
The report cannot be delivered today because two figures still need to be verified. (formal written)
Lliurarem l'informe demà: avui encara hem de comprovar dues dades.
We will deliver the report tomorrow: today we still have to check two figures. (plain-language, agentive alternative)
The formal version legitimately backgrounds the responsible team. The plain version names the commitment through first-person plural. Both are natural; audience and accountability determine the choice.
Before and after: a full revision
Before — grammatical words, imported architecture:
L'informe va ser finalment completat per part de l'equip, resultant en la identificació de tres àrees que necessiten d'una millora.
The report was eventually completed by the team, resulting in the identification of three areas that need an improvement.
After — Catalan agency and event structure:
Finalment, l'equip va enllestir l'informe i va detectar tres àmbits que cal millorar.
The team finally completed the report and identified three areas for improvement.
The revision chooses finalment, restores the agent, replaces the posterior gerund with coordination, turns identificació into detectar, and uses cal millorar instead of copying an English noun phrase. Not every source noun requires a target noun.
An annotated paragraph
Quan vam rebre les dades, en vam comprovar la coherència i les vam comparar amb la sèrie anterior. Hi vam trobar dues discrepàncies, però no alteraven la conclusió principal. Per això, l'equip va mantenir la recomanació i va explicar els límits de l'anàlisi en una nota.
When we received the data, we checked their consistency and compared them with the previous series. We found two discrepancies in them, but they did not alter the main conclusion. For that reason, the team retained the recommendation and explained the limits of the analysis in a note.
- Omitted subjects in the first sentence avoid unnecessary nosaltres.
- en vam comprovar and hi vam trobar maintain reference through Catalan clitics instead of repeating de les dades / en les dades.
- però marks a local contrast; per això marks the actual inference. There is no connector merely because a new sentence begins.
- Active verbs identify the analytical acts and the responsible team.
Common Mistakes
⚠️ Ella va dir que ella enviaria la seva resposta quan ella arribés.
Grammatical with contrastive readings, but copied English subject and possessive repetition creates unintended contrast in a neutral account.
✅ Va dir que enviaria la resposta quan arribés.
She said she would send the reply when she arrived. (Subjects remain recoverable.)
⚠️ Eventualment van trobar una solució.
Valid with a contingent or occasional reading, but not a safe rendering of English eventually; use finalment for the eventual outcome.
✅ Finalment van trobar una solució.
They eventually found a solution.
❌ Es va donar compte de que l'expedient estava incomplet.
Spanish-influenced collocation and nonstandard de que after this predicate.
✅ Es va adonar que l'expedient estava incomplet.
She realized that the file was incomplete.
❌ Va enviar la sol·licitud, rebent una resposta l'endemà.
The gerund incorrectly carries a later event.
✅ Va enviar la sol·licitud i va rebre una resposta l'endemà.
She sent the application and received a reply the next day.
⚠️ Substituir este per aquest en la veu d'un personatge valencià perquè s'assembla al castellà.
Misguided editing: este is a genuine Valencian demonstrative, not proof of translationese.
✅ Mantenir este si forma part d'una veu valenciana coherent.
Keep este when it belongs to a coherent Valencian voice.
Practice
Take a translated paragraph and underline every overt subject, passive, support-verb construction, connector, possessive, and gerund. For each one, state the work it performs. Revise only those that have no clear function. Then read the result aloud: if every sentence has the same length and starts with a connector, revise the rhythm as well as the grammar.
Key Takeaways
- Translationese is imported decision-making, not a blacklist of individual words.
- Reconstruct topic, focus, agency, and reference before choosing Catalan word order and clitics.
- Passives and nominalizations are legitimate when their discourse function is real; automatic sequences obscure actors and events.
- Translate the logical relation expressed by a connector, not its dictionary headword.
- Distinguish contact-induced nonstandard forms from standard regional Catalan. Naturalization must never become dialect erasure.
Now practice Catalan
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Catalan →Related Topics
- Editing for Cohesion and RhythmC1 — How to revise Catalan reference chains, clitics, repetition, sentence length, connectors, punctuation, and cadence without flattening the writer's voice.
- Academic StyleB1 — Build Catalan academic arguments through precise definitions, calibrated claims, evidence, impersonal constructions, integrated citations, and coherent paragraphs.
- Administrative and Institutional CatalanB1 — Draft Catalan requests, notices, and resolutions with conventional structure, consistent address, visible agency, precise terminology, and plain-language revisions.
- Preverbal and Postverbal SubjectsB1 — How Catalan positions subjects before or after the verb to distinguish established topics, new participants, presentational events, focus, and questions.
- Contrasting: Però, En Canvi, Tanmateix, and Ara BéA2 — Distinguish local opposition, comparison, counterexpectation, and argumentative pivots with natural Catalan contrast markers.
- Cause and Result: Perquè, Per Tant, Doncs, and Així DoncsA2 — Distinguish a stated cause from an inferred result, and choose perquè, per tant, doncs, or així doncs with natural scope, punctuation, and register.