JAFERRER GERMAN/ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS SERVICES

What is Translation?

Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production, in another language, of a new, equivalent text — the target text, or translation.

Traditionally, translation has been a human activity, although attempts have been made to automate and computerize the translation of natural-language texts — machine translation — or to use computers as an aid to translation — computer-assisted translation.

The goal of translation is to establish a relation of equivalence of intent between the source and target texts (that is to say, to ensure that both texts communicate the same message), while taking into account a number of constraints. These constraints include context, the rules of grammar of both languages, their writing conventions, their idioms, and the like.

The term and the concept of "translation"

"Translation" is, etymologically, a "carrying across" or "bringing across": the Latin translatio derives from transferre (trans, "across" + ferre, "to carry" or "to bring"). The modern European languages, Romance, Germanic and Slavic, have generally formed their own equivalent terms for this concept after the Latin model: after transferre or after the kindred traducere ("to lead across" or "to bring across"). Additionally, the Greek term for "translation," metaphrasis (a "speaking across"), has supplied English with "metaphrase," meaning a literal, or word-for-word, translation, as contrasted with "paraphrase" (a "saying in other words," from the Greek paraphrasis).