Writing · November 4, 2026

Writing in a second language without sounding translated

By PWA Team

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A colleague once wrote to a client: “Please find attached the actual figures.” She meant the latest ones. The client read “actual” as “the real figures, unlike the ones you sent before” and spent an afternoon looking for a mistake that wasn't there. Every word was English. The meaning came from Spanish, where actual means current.

Why correct can still sound wrong

You can write a sentence with no grammar mistakes that no native speaker would ever write. Every word is right and the structure is legal, but the choice of words follows your first language. Readers notice it the way they notice an accent: they understand you, but they can tell.

That's fine for a chat. In a job application, a client email or a report, it can make careful work look rushed. The good news is that the patterns are predictable, and most people repeat the same handful.

False friends

False friends are words that look like a word in your language but mean something else. Between related languages, they're the most common source of translated-sounding writing, because they feel completely natural to the writer.

• “Actually” means “in fact”, not “currently”, as Spanish actualmente or French actuellement suggest.
• “Eventually” means “in the end”, not “possibly”, as German eventuell does.
• “Sensible” means reasonable, not “sensitive”, as in Spanish sensible or French sensible.
• “Control” in English is to direct or limit something; checking something is “check”, not “control”, as in German kontrollieren.

Keep your own list. When a word feels too easy because it looks like the one you'd use at home, look it up.

Phrases carried over word for word

Fixed expressions rarely survive translation. Each language has its own way of opening an email, asking for something or apologising, and the literal version of yours sounds odd in another.

Every word in the first version is English, but three choices come from other languages: “doubt” used for “question”, “revert back” for “reply”, and “until” for “by”. A native reader understands it and still notices.

Habits from your first language

Some differences are bigger than single words:

• Formality. Languages draw the line between polite and stiff in different places. A level of courtesy that's normal in one can sound cold, or overdone, in another.
• Sentence length. Some languages favour long sentences joined by commas or chains of participles. Carried over, they read as run-on sentences. Our post on sentence length shows where to split.
• Directness. English work email usually puts the request first; many other languages build up to it. Readers expect their own order, so switch when you switch language.

How to improve, sentence by sentence

1. Read native writing of the kind you produce: emails from colleagues, articles in your field. Copy phrases that do a job you need.
2. Write in the second language directly rather than translating a draft. Translating pulls your first language's structure along.
3. When a sentence feels off, look for how natives say the same thing, not for the meaning of each word.
4. Learn your personal list. Most people repeat five or six patterns; fix those and much of the accent disappears.

Where a checker helps, and where it doesn't

A grammar checker catches spelling, agreement and many wrong words, but it can't know which meaning you intended for a false friend. A rewrite helps with that: it shows the same idea phrased fluently, and you can see what changed.

In Private Writing Assistant, for example, select a sentence, press Rewrite and choose Fluent: you get a natural version with the changes highlighted, in the same language. Compare the two, and add the phrases worth keeping to your personal list.