Take a look at this:
The standard way to open a standard businessletteris with the salutation “Mr.” or “Ms.,” the person's last name and a colon (not a comma!), like this:
(Dear Ms. Chu: Dear Mr. Paige: Dear Ms. Conly: ) Forget about using Miss or Mrs. They were left back in the 20th century. We do not use them anymore.
NOTE: In today’s global and multilingual world, you never know sometimes if someone is a man or a woman when you see their name in print form. I recently met a man named Kelly, which is usually thought of as a woman’s name. In some countries, Jan is a man’s name. In others, it’s a woman’s. If you do NOT know for 100% sure whether the recipient of the letter is a man or woman, then simply use their first and last name in the greeting, such as: (Dear Kim Palchikoff: or Dear Jan Jones:).
You can use the first name only if you are on a first-name basis with the recipient depending on the nature of the letter. (Dear Steve, Dear Jessica:) Usually we do not address someone by their first name until we have met them and established an informal relationship. In Russian it’s the difference between Vui and Ti. Don’t confuse them.
Never spell out the titles Mr., Ms., and Dr. Do spell out these other titles and similar ones:
Professor, Dean, Rabbi, Imam, Senator, Governor, Captain, Admiral, Judge, President.
Make sure your sentences and paragraphs are not too long. Russian sentences and paragraphs are much, much longer than ones in English. Many foreigners joke that a Russian sentence can be as long as an American paragraph. As you know, even Russian words can be extremely long! Simply translating Russian materials into English is not enough for a good translation. You must make sure that the sentences are short enough so that they are clear and that they are not run-on, meaning they go on and on and are too long.
There are lots of rules for when to break a sentence into shorter ones, but the easiest thing to remember is that if you can break a sentence into two sentences, it is best to do so. If a sentence is complete, meaning it has a verb, noun and subject, that’s fine. There is no such thing as a sentence that is too short as long as it is grammatically correct and has all the components a sentence needs. (Example: “I await your response.”
SAMPLE RUN-ON SENTENCE
I use my judgment in resolving questions where the tax law is unclear or where conflicts may exist between the taxing authorities and unless you instruct me otherwise, I resolve such questions in your favor whenever possible. However, the opinion I express does not bind the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) thus, I cannot guarantee the outcome in the event the IRS challenges my opinion.
Again, you must look closely at any sentence in English that is three or more sentences long and make sure there isn’t a way to break it into pieces. The one above is two and a half lines long. I would automatically check that, too. Often in the legal world sentences are longer than usual, but it always is good to check them twice. Below you can see how the above sentence was broken up into four sentences.
I use my judgment in resolving questions where the tax law is unclear or where conflicts may exist between the taxing authorities. Unless you instruct me otherwise, I resolve such questions in your favor whenever possible. However, the opinion I express does not bind the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Thus, I cannot guarantee the outcome in the event the IRS challenges my opinion.
In English we sign our letters with our first name first, and last name after that.The last name is NOT in capital letters. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen Russians sign their letters PALCHIKOFF, Kim or Kim PALCHIKOFF. It’s something simple, but I’ve seen this mistake many, many times. We never use a last name first in any circumstance in English and we never, never put our last name in capitals.
Finally, have someone proofread it. It’s best to have a native English speaker, but if you can’t then have a Russian speaker with a solid knowledge of English take a look at it. As we say, “Two eyes are better than one.” Often there are grammar errors in translations, even those done by professional translators who are not editing for sentence and paragraph length but are simply translating word for word what is on the page in Russian. There are especially a lot of problems with articles (a, an, the, etc……) as these parts of speech do not exist in the Russian language. But that is the subject of another posting.
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