What is Translation?

Translation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about language translation. For other uses, see Translation (disambiguation).

"Translator" redirects here. For other uses, see Translator (disambiguation).

For article translations in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Not to be confused with Transliteration.

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Translation
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Legal Literary Bible Quran Linguistic validation Medical Regulatory Technical Interpretation Cultural Word-for-word vs. Sense-for-sense
Theory
Translation studies Skopos theory Translation project Translation criticism Dynamic and formal equivalence Contrastive linguistics
Technologies
CAT Machine translation Mobile (machine) translation Dubbing Subtitling Postediting Multimedia translation
Localization
Glocalization Internationalization and localization Language localisation Game localization Dub localization
Institutional
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Related topics
Transcription Transliteration Video relay service (VRS) Telephone interpreting Language barrier Fan translation Fansub Fandub Books and magazines on translation Bible translations by language Translated books Translators WikiProject Translation Studies
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Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text.^[1] While interpreting—the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages—antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.^[2]
Translators always risk inappropriate spill-over of source-language idiom and usage into the target-language translation. On the other hand, spill-overs have imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched the target languages. Indeed, translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into which they have translated.^[3]
Owing to the demands of business documentation consequent to the Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-18th century, some translation specialties have become formalized, with dedicated schools and professional associations.^[4]
Because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator.^[5] The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated language localization.^[6]
Translation studies systematically study the theory and practice of translation.^[7]