"Ženy to chápou."

Translation: Women understand it.

[katrinkadee]

"The women understand it" is grammatically correct. I assume that it is not a good translation here because it refers to a specific group of women and not to women in general.

[ion1122]

Not only that, katrinkadee, but the Czech sentence contains no demonstrative (such as to, ty, etc.) That is a pretty good indication that 'the' should not be arbitrarily inserted into the English.

In translating, you sometimes need to insert a "the" into the English, even when there is no demonstrative in the Czech, in order to be idiomatic; but you should not do so routinely.

[Hugophiiragi]

Just to be clear, is "it" here a demonstrative or a pronoun ? I mean, it can be both right ? So you can put "ho" like in "ženy ho chápou", or "to", right ?

[VladaFu]

But I probably get what you mean.

Ženy ho/jej chápou. relates to some particular object in masculine or neuter (ten dopis, ten článek, to sdělení, to psaní) .

Ženy to chápou. relates to some "it". Some concept or abstract or concrete object, the thing we were discussing... It can be a clause "Ženy chápou to, že...".

[IreneWainw]

Many thanks. So, if I understand it right, "to" used in this sort of sentence is conceptually at a greater distance from the actual object than "ho/jej", just as we use "to" to refer to a generalized object in other sentences, for example, "Je to tady hezké".

[IreneWainw]

Are to and ho equivalent in meaning?

[VladaFu]

see my answer to Hugo

[rishabhnitc]

Why to should be at 2nd place?

[BoneheadBass]

The so-called "second position rule." You can learn a bit about it here: https://mluvtecesky.net/en/grammar/word_order.