Formal or informal: setting the tone of a translation

Many languages have two ways to say "you": the polite one (Sie, vous, usted, Lei) and the casual one (du, tu, tú). Translation engines guess, and often guess wrong. Mate lets you decide.

Where the control is

Next to the engine pill you'll find Formality on Mac, or Tone on iPhone and iPad. It offers:

• Auto: match the tone of the original text.
• Formal: polite address. Sie, vous, usted.
• Informal: casual address. du, tu, tú.

On Mac you can also set a default in Settings › Translation › Formality.

When it appears

The control only shows when it can do something:

• With the AI style, always.
• With the Advanced style, for these languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian.
• With Basic, never.

Both Advanced and AI are part of Mate Pro.

Examples

"How are you?" into German:

• Formal: "Wie geht es Ihnen?"
• Informal: "Wie geht es dir?"

"Could you send me the file?" into French:

• Formal: "Pourriez-vous m'envoyer le fichier ?"
• Informal: "Tu peux m'envoyer le fichier ?"

Tip for emails

Write the whole email in one go with Advanced and Formal set. Sentence-by-sentence translation drifts between registers; one pass keeps it consistent.