Copied from the Duolingo forum: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/36862795
Author: br0d4
Translation of this post in Polish: viewtopic.php?t=2790-co-warto-wiedzieć- ... w-duolingo
The main part translated into English, for all our fellow English speaking users, e.g. those that use this course as a reverse tree...
What's worth knowing when you start translating sentences in Duolingo
Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko
There are a few specific rules in the Duolingo course that are worth learning in order to know how to cope with the challenges. I have an impression that many persons who start learning a language are not fully aware of what is expected of them. This post is intended to facilitate learning by explaining the rules according to which the sentences in the course should (1) be translated.
§1. Briefly
You have to translate as accurately as possible, but no more accurately than that. For some sentences a literal translation is impossible or makes no sense at all.
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When translating a sentence, you need to keep the meaning of its individual parts (subject and predicate, objects and adverbials, the order of words having a similar function in the sentence) – and at the same time the translation should be correct in the target language.
You have to translate a sentence into a sentence and an expression into an expression.
You should use modern language, unmarked and with possibly neutral syntax.
If you use hints, consider only the top one.
Pay attention to typos, not all of them are let up on.
§2. More precisely
A. The sentences come from the target language
In every course at Duolingo, the target language sentences (or words) are always the basis for creating challenges. So in an English language course, the English sentences are the starting point. It should be assumed that the initial sentence is correct (2). Each sentence in the target language is used to introduce a word and/or a linguistic concept (this concept does not always match the name of the Skill to which it is assigned).
These sentences have been translated into Polish by the people working on the course, and in the early stage of teaching, the course users also translate them into Polish. But as each topic ("Skill") is repeated, more and more difficult challenges are created (3), up to the translation of sentences from Polish into English – that is, the translation into the initial sentence.
Out of all possible translations of a given English initial sentence into Polish, the so-called "best translation" is chosen to be placed in the course as a model translation presented to students – that is, the one that we believe will best help them learn English. It is not always a sentence that sounds best in Polish. Moreover, sometimes the translation into Polish is not able to accurately convey the meaning of the sentence in English – then interpretation problems arise. Many sentences can be translated into Polish in several ways. Due to the flexibility of the Polish language, as well as the ambiguity of some words (whether Polish or English), the number of translations often grows rapidly: record-breaking sentences have not even a few, but ten thousand or so acceptable translations in the list of answers. However, translations that do not make sense cannot be accepted, even though a given word has many meanings (e.g. in the sentence "I live by the square" the word "square" means "plaza", not "regular quadrilateral" or "set square").
So how is this "best translation" chosen, that is, which one is chosen as the model translation of a sentence?
B. Translations from English
When translating sentences from English into Polish, the rules for choosing the best translation are as follows, and the order of these rules is also important.
The translation has to be correct (grammatically, semantically, stylistically, according to the rules of spelling (4)) – but it does not have to be perfect or literary; it doesn't even have to be particularly pretty.
However, you should be careful with the order of some words, because in every language – both Polish and English – there are standards that must be respected. In Polish, for example, you should not put short pronoun forms at the end of a sentence if a long form of that pronoun exists; nouns should be in the appropriate case as governed by the verb used. Prepositions and conjunctions must be translated according to their meaning in the English sentence – which does not mean a literal translation, and sometimes the preposition even has to be omitted – or to the contrary, added (5).
The translation has to be as close to the original as possible.
A sentence must be translated into a complete sentence, and an expression that is not a sentence (6) – into an expression. The translation should be equivalent in meaning and context in which it can be used, which does not mean that it is possible to translate the words of one language into another using the "one-to-one" method (e.g. we will not translate "goodbye", as "kind bye" and "good morning" is not "fine daybreak"). You have to translate as accurately as possible – but no more accurately than that. Where possible, a sentence should be translated faithfully, that is, it should have the same subject, the same predicate (verb), the same objects, adverbials (in English adverbials are just adverbs), etc. (7). The order of words serving the same function in a sentence cannot be altered (e.g. if the subject is "Ann and Mary", you cannot use "Maria and Anna" or "they" in the translation). If a word in the English sentence works as an adjective, it cannot be translated into a noun, unless the appropriate word does not exist in Polish. The active voice should not be changed into the passive voice, unless it is required by common usage. If the sentence cannot be translated accurately, e.g. because the English expression is an idiom, or because it uses a concept or structure (8) that does not exist in the other language (e.g. the adjective "welcome" in Polish is a circumlocution, not a single word) – it should be translated so that the sentence in one language can be used in the same situation in which the sentence in the other language would have been used. In such cases, a wider range of translations is also allowed.
The translation cannot add additional nuances to the sentence, which were not present in the original sentence.
For example, you cannot use diminutives where they are not in English (and diminutives are extremely rare in English). You cannot use a noun with a narrow meaning where a noun with a broad meaning is used in English (e.g. "pasta" must not be translated as "spaghetti" because it is only one of many types of pasta, the translation "pasta" must be used). The translation should be adequate to the situation in which it would be used in the language from which it is translated (i.e. it should keep the linguistic register). Therefore do not use colloquial words or words of a different register than the word being translated (e.g. "dude" instead of "man"). Moreover, words that have fallen out of common usage cannot be accepted (e.g. "wench" instead of "girl", "scyrte" instead of "shirt", "suitor" instead of "boyfriend"). Sentences, the syntax of which causes that they can be found mainly in poetry, in a language stylized as archaic or emphatic expressions, are also not accepted.
The translation is supposed to help you remember English sentences, not Polish ones.
In case of doubts as what is to be considered as "the best translation", i.e. the model translation for a sentence in the course, the one chosen should be one which subsequent exercises using this sentence translating in the other direction (in this case from Polish into English), in a way "suggests" the right answer in English. For this reason, some translations have a slightly unnatural word order: unnatural for Polish (but not incorrect), and close to the order expected in the English sentence, or a word that most resembles the English word is used, even if it is used less frequently in Polish than any of its synonyms.
Moreover, the translation should be consistent with customary language usage.
This rule is in the last position in terms of its importance and carries the least weight when it comes to choosing the main translation.
C. Translations from Polish
The translation, of course, has to be correct.
An English sentence must have a specific syntax, which is extremely important for the function and meaning of the sentence, which is not the case in Polish – that is, the subject, predicate, possible auxiliary verbs, an object or both objects must be placed in certain places of the sentence. English adverbs must be placed where they are allowed to be used, adjectives must follow the order of English grammar; where English requires a preposition, it must be added even if it is not present in Polish, etc., etc.
The translation is to be consistent with English usage.
As you can see, when translating sentences from Polish into English, point 5. is moved to the 2nd position – after all, it's an English language course, not Polish.
The translation into English should be as close as possible to the sentence in Polish.
Again, it is, of course, not meant to be a one-to-one translation.
The translation cannot add any additional nuances to the Polish sentence.
§3. Appendix 1 - using hints
Hints (suggestions on the translation of words or parts of the sentence) are not adjusted to the context of that sentence. However, the first hint on top should always be correct, because it is compared with the actual translation. All other hints below the first one - you can consider only at your own risk. They can refer to completely different meanings of a given word, or meanings that cannot be used in a given context (e.g. in the sentence "I live by the square" the word "square" means "plaza", not "regular quadrilateral" or "set square").
If a multi-word hint is defined for a sentence or multi-word expression, it is always shown in the highest position and it should be correct. Unfortunately, it is not always the case - it happens, that the hint is defined for several words, but some of them are not directly adjacent to each other, e.g. for the sentence "he puts his hat on" you can define a hint for "puts ... hat on". But it is impossible to define a hint when the words belonging to an expression are separated by more than one word, such as in "he puts his favorite brown hat on". For this reason, in a case of a sentence using words for which a multi-word hint was defined, which is actually used in another sentence, and in this sentence these words are separated by more than 1 word - the hint system goes astray and can display a completely meaningless suggestion. Duolingo's developers know this and they are trying to do something about it, but for now, the results are not satisfactory: a correction in one type of sentence causes troubles in another type of them.
§4. Appendix 2 - accepting typos
Duolingo accepts typos under the following conditions, all of which must be met simultaneously:
The following are considered a typo:
replacing 1 letter in a given word with another letter, OR
skipping 1 letter in a given word, OR
adding 1 unnecessary letter in a given word, OR
changing the order of 2 adjacent letters in a word.
A misspelled word is not another word of the language concerned, and Duolingo compares the typed word not only with the list of words learned in a given language course - but with the lists of words used in all courses of a given language throughout Duolingo.
This means that under no circumstances is it acceptable, for example, to enter a single noun instead of a plural, or to enter "skirt" instead of "shirt".
; Fluent: 
, 
; Getting there: 
; Intermediate: 
; Beginner: 