Russian translators are perfectly familiar with the controversies of Russian spelling rules. Nowadays the phonetic and grammatical principles are applied to define a complicated set of spelling rules. Some are related to the ‘relationship’ of series of vowels to hard/soft pairs of consonants. Voiced consonants are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent. Russian features a general assimilation of voicing and palatalization. The process of voicing assimilation applies across word boundaries when there is no pause between words. To be aware of those rules is crucial for a translator to avoid confusion and embarrassing mistakes.
Well, I have no intention today to explain all those rules as for a Russian translator they are pretty evident, and besides we remember the language and not the rules. We just use it, that’s all. But in my experience I still have some accidents in using commas or not; which punctuation mark belongs here or there.

Granted, in some “mechanical” cases commas are used in English where they aren’t in Russian, including: certain date renditions (“My daughter was born June 17, 1993.”); within large numbers (1,700,000); to introduce direct quotation (“He shouted, ‘Boo!’”); and in friendly letter salutations (“Dear friends,”).

In English, dependent clauses starting with “that,” “what,” “if,” “where,” “when” and the like DON’T want commas before them. And “because” doesn’t need a comma before it but “потому что” often does.

A subject clause, even a lengthy one, ordinarily doesn’t take a comma after it – although its translation into Russian probably will.

The “which” which starts a restrictive subordinate clause doesn’t need a comma. The point: a который clause in English should not produce a comma reaction.

So for me it means that every time I want to put a comma automatically I don’t do that. How cool is that? Although it works in English and in Russian I just have to follow my intuition.

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