Poliția protejează victima.

Romanian usually puts the definite article at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

• poliție = police
• poliția = the police
• victimă = a victim
• victima = the victim

So both nouns in this sentence are definite.

Here, poliția is grammatically singular. In Romanian, it often means the police as an institution or force, not individual officers.

That is why the sentence has a singular subject in meaning, even though English often treats police as plural.

If you wanted to talk about individual police officers, you might use polițiștii = the police officers.

Protejează is the present-tense form of the verb a proteja = to protect.

In this sentence, it means protects because the subject is poliția.

A useful point: in Romanian, this form can be used for both he/she/it protects and they protect. The subject tells you which meaning is intended.

In this sentence, Romanian uses the normal subject–verb–object order:

• Poliția = subject
• protejează = verb
• victima = direct object

So the meaning is The police protect the victim, not the other way around.

If you reversed the nouns, you would change the meaning:

• Victima protejează poliția = The victim protects the police

Because victima is the definite form.

• victimă = a victim
• victima = the victim

This is a common Romanian pattern with feminine nouns ending in -ă: when they become definite singular, the ending changes to -a.

A simple English-friendly approximation is:

po-li-TSI-a pro-te-JEA-zuh VIK-ti-ma

A few helpful sound notes:

• ț sounds like ts in cats
• j sounds like the s in measure
• ă sounds like a short neutral uh
• ea in protejează is pronounced together, roughly like ya / ea in one syllable

Stress usually falls like this:

• po-li-ȚI-a
• pro-te-JEA-ză
• VIC-ti-ma

Romanian often uses pe before a direct object that refers to a person, especially with pronouns and proper names. But with common nouns, usage is more flexible.

So Poliția protejează victima is a normal and natural sentence.

You may also hear a fuller version such as:

Poliția o protejează pe victimă.

In that version:

• o is a direct-object pronoun meaning her
• pe victimă marks the person as the object more explicitly

Both patterns are useful to know.

Yes, Romanian word order is somewhat flexible, but the basic neutral order is the one you see here:

Poliția protejează victima.

Other orders are possible for emphasis, style, or context, but they may sound less neutral. For a learner, the safest default is subject + verb + object.

It can mean either, depending on context.

Romanian does not usually make the same strong distinction that English makes between:

• protects
• is protecting

So Poliția protejează victima could mean:

• The police protect the victim
• The police are protecting the victim

The situation around the sentence tells you which one is meant.

No. Victimă / victima is a grammatically feminine noun, but it can refer to a male or female victim.

So grammatical gender and real-life gender are not always the same thing in Romanian.

The same idea applies to poliția: it is grammatically feminine, but that does not mean the police are female.