I work in real estate, and sometimes I have to translate respective inscriptions from my native Russian into English. I get stuck in some cases where not only linguistic, but cultural differences have an impact. I’d appreciate it if you would help me to sort out one of these issues.
When describing a property, we usually mention about bathrooms. But our conception of bathrooms often differs from yours. 🙂 For example, we have no need for specifying “2 bathrooms” or “5 bathrooms”, because most of our properties have only one bathroom. But there is another characteristic that Russian property buyers consider important: whether the toilet is separated from bathroom or combined with it. I fail to formulate it correctly in English.
Here are the standard terms that we use:
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Совмещённый санузел (sovmeshchonny sanuzel), literally “combined sanitation unit”, means: “The property has one room containing all hygienic facilities, including bathtub, toilet, basin and so on.”
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Раздельный санузел (razdelny sanuzel), literally “separated sanitation unit”, means: “The property has two separate rooms, one with a toilet bowl, and another with a bathtub.”
Please help me to understand how to convey these terms in British English reasonably. I apologize if my inquiry seems foolish or is phrased awkwardly.
Best Answer
According to Wikipedia’s entries for Public toilet and Bathroom, the British term for a room containing a bath is a bathroom and the term for a room containing a toilet is a toilet.
If these are accurate, it would make sense to translate: