FAQ – Polish Translation Style Guides

Polish often forces decisions that English leaves open. A good style guide records those decisions and explains when to apply them.

How do we address the reader?
• Informal: ty — for example, „Masz pytania?”
• Formal, one person: Pan/Pani — „Czy ma Pan pytania?” / „Czy ma Pani pytania?”
• Formal, an audience: Państwo — „Czy mają Państwo pytania?”

Active or passive? Compare „Twoje zamówienie zostało wysłane.” with „Wysłaliśmy Twoje zamówienie.” Both are correct, but they create a different tone.

Gendered or neutral wording? „Jesteś gotowy?” addresses a male reader, „Jesteś gotowa?” a female reader, while „Zaczynamy?” can avoid an unnecessary gender choice.

Other decisions may concern brand-name inflection, slogans, capitalisation, units of measurement, punctuation, terminology and product names.

Often, yes, although the Polish guide does not need to duplicate your global brand guidelines.

Your global guide may define values, tone and positioning. The Polish guide answers the next question: what do those principles mean in Polish?

For example, “friendly and direct” still leaves open whether the reader should be addressed as ty, Pan/Pani or Państwo. The Polish guide acts as a practical localisation layer built on top of your existing brand guidance.

They solve different problems.

A style guide sets the principles of communication: tone, formality, preferred constructions, treatment of names, audience and similar choices.

A glossary or termbase records preferred terminology, such as how product categories, technical terms, feature names or recurring phrases should be translated.

A translation memory stores previously translated segments so they can be reused or referenced later.

I often describe these three as the core linguistic assets of a multilingual organisation: style guide, glossary/termbase and translation memory.

Not necessarily long at all. I usually prefer to begin with a concise, practical document, often one or two pages, and expand it when real projects reveal the need for additional guidance.

A short guide that translators and reviewers actually read is more useful than a comprehensive twenty-page document nobody opens. Detailed terminology usually belongs in a glossary rather than in the style guide itself.

I normally start by reviewing your existing communication: your website, marketing materials, brand guidelines, product pages, previous translations and, where relevant, the way your competitors communicate in Polish.

I then discuss the key questions with you. A short conversation of around 15–30 minutes is often enough to establish the first version, provided I have had time to research your company beforehand.

A style guide can also be created for a company entering the Polish market for the first time.

For a typical small or medium-sized localisation project, the process is straightforward:

1. Initial contact to establish your goals and audience.
2. Review of your existing content and relevant competitors.
3. A short consultation to resolve the main language and brand questions.
4. Preparation of a first draft.
5. Review and finalisation, usually through email or a short follow-up call.

Larger projects may require more stakeholders and additional rounds, but the principle remains the same: establish the important decisions early so that later translation work becomes faster and more consistent.

Absolutely. In fact, that is one of its main advantages.

A good style guide belongs to the client, not to one translator. It can be shared with freelance translators, agencies, reviewers, copywriters and internal teams so that everyone works from the same principles.

This becomes particularly valuable when several suppliers work on the same brand or when your localisation team changes over time.

Yes, and this is becoming increasingly important.

A style guide can provide useful instructions for human translators, reviewers and AI-assisted workflows alike. It can help define tone, preferred forms of address, terminology rules and examples of acceptable or unacceptable wording.

However, giving an AI system a style guide does not guarantee perfect compliance. Outputs still need appropriate review, particularly for customer-facing, legal or brand-sensitive content. I see the guide as part of a broader quality system.

Absolutely. If anything, they are becoming even more useful.

A style guide is not tied to a particular translation method. It defines the language decisions your organisation wants to follow, so it can guide AI systems as well as human translators, reviewers and copywriters.

For example, an AI tool can be instructed to use ty rather than Pan/Pani, prefer active wording, follow agreed terminology, avoid certain constructions and maintain a defined tone of voice. The same document gives human translators and reviewers exactly the same reference point.

That makes a good style guide especially valuable in mixed workflows, where AI-generated or machine-translated content is reviewed by people. It helps everyone — human or machine — work towards the same result. The technology may change, but the need for clear linguistic guidance does not.

Whenever your communication changes or a recurring issue appears.

You may introduce a new product line, change your tone of voice, begin addressing a new audience, or discover that translators keep asking the same question. Those are all good reasons to update the guide.

I prefer to treat a style guide as a living document rather than something that is written once and forgotten.

No. It can be just as useful when communicating with Polish-speaking audiences in the UK, Ireland, the United States, Australia or elsewhere.

The audience and context may affect the language decisions. For example, a public-service document for Polish residents in the UK may require a different tone and set of conventions from ecommerce copy aimed at customers in Poland. Audience definition should therefore be one of the first things recorded in the guide.

I normally charge for style-guide work on an hourly basis. Before starting, I try to give you a realistic estimate of the time required based on the amount of research, the number of stakeholders and the complexity of the project.

For a concise first version, the work is often relatively small compared with the value it can provide across months or years of subsequent translation and localisation.