Handling Plurals, Dates, and Units in Ukrainian UI Localization
UI, or User Interface, is your first and most important touchpoint with clients. Its role in every digital action we perform is truly crucial, yet a quality user interface is as helpful as it’s seamless and invisible. When localizing your product UI, it’s essential to reduce any friction—the points that make users frustrated, confused, and, as a result, churned. This is where high-quality localization service can really step in to save the day.
Common challenges in Ukrainian UI localization
The most common localization path for the Ukrainian digital market, which is “English source > Ukrainian target,” hides various pitfalls that might not be so obvious. Not only does Ukrainian use the Cyrillic alphabet instead of Latin, but it handles plurals, numbers, unit measurements, and many other technical details in a way that makes it impossible to simply copy other languages's approaches. Let's take a look at some examples.
Plural forms and grammar rules
| ICU syntax | Example |
| [=1]: Exactly 1 | [1] товар |
| [ONE]: 1, 21, 31, 101, 1001… | [21] товар |
| [FEW]: 2, 3, 4, 22, 23, 24, 102, 1002… | [34] товари |
| [MANY]: 0, 5, 6, 11, 12, 100, 1000… | [65] товарів |
| [OTHER]: 0,0~1,5, 10,0, 100,0, 1000,0… | [1,5] товару |
Unlike English, Ukrainian requires several plural forms for UI localization, depending on what number precedes the text. This can be represented with a following ICU syntax structure.
Genitive case for second declension nouns also can be rather tricky at times, since it’s determined by semantics.
| The -а(-я) ending is typically used after clearly shaped objects, things that have dimensions and form | Living beings (клієнта, користувача) Objects and devices (комп'ютера, принтера) Units of measure, currencies, days of the week, months (кілограма, юаня, вівторка, січня) Elements or parts, concrete things, geometrical figures (сегмента, документа, квадрата) |
| The -у(-ю) ending is typically used with nouns that designate collective or abstract concepts | Generic or collective nouns (набору, цукру) Natural phenomena (туману, вітру) Activities, impressions, emotional states (руху, прогресу, страху) Names of places, spaces, processes, states, properties, institutions, particularly of foreign origin (простору, аналізу, офісу) |
Date and time formatting standards
Formatting dates is another area where it’s important to keep the differences with English in mind. Typical date format for Ukraine is DD.MM.YYYY or “Day Month Year,” while time is rendered in 24-hour format (00:00 or 22:15), which might require in-UI conversion. So if we wanted to write down current date and time in Ukraine, it would look like this:
14:43 12.03.2026 or 14:43 12 березня 2026 року
It is also important to remember that we do not put a period after most abbreviated units of measurement, like хв, с, год, км, м, см, грн etc.
Numbers and measurement units localization
Rules regarding numbers in Ukrainian are also pretty straightforward, yet different from English.
- The decimal separator is comma: 23,5
- The thousands separator is space: 10 000
- Fractional parts don’t need to be separated by spaces: 445,98831588
- Numbers between 1000 and 9999 don’t need to be separated by spaces: 3500
Historically, metric system is used in Ukraine, and units are typically written after a space (except for the number and degrees character, if the scale is not indicated).
- Distance and length are measured in meters (30 м), kilometers (2,5 км) etc.
- Weight is measured in grams (358 г), kilograms (1001 кг) etc.
- Liquids are measured in milliliters (250 мл), liters (25 л) etc.
- Area is measured in square meters (3,88 м²), hectares (6 га) etc.
- Temperature is measured in degrees Celsius (25 °C or 25°).
Handling currency and percentages
According to local norms, the currency sign or abbreviation should be placed after the value (350 ¥ or 350 JPY). While regulations require that prices are converted to local currency (гривня, грн, UAH or ₴), it’s worth noting that most Ukrainians keep an eye on global currency conversion rates for dollars and euros.
Percentages are usually written with the % sign directly after the number and behave the same as regular numbers (“Знижка 50 %”).
How glossaries can help maintain consistency
Users expect your UI to be consistent—if they clicked a button titled “Мій профіль,” they expect to land on a page named “Мій профіль,” not “Мій аккаунт.” To help you maintain this consistency, especially when there is an entire team of people working on localizing your product, consider creating and maintaining a glossary with all necessary terms, product names, UI strings, and other important contextual information.
Tools for creating, maintaining, and managing a glossary
Most CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools and localization platforms allow teams to create and maintain custom glossaries or terminology databases to ensure consistency across UI strings. Here are some popular examples:
- SDL Trados Studio
- MemoQ
- Wordfast
- MetaTexis for Word
- OmegaT
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