Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.
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.
Due 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.
Because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to automate translation (machine translation) or to mechanically aid the human translator (computer-assisted translation). The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated language localization.
Translation studies deal with the systematic study of the theory, the description and the application of translation.
Read more about Translation: Etymology, Fidelity Vs. Transparency, Translators, Machine Translation, Literary Translation
Other articles related to "translation, translations":
... Hazan (French translation) ... Pyramyd (French translation) ... and Hudson (Page numbers cited from French translation) ...
... he translators and editors used the notes to give a translation that was formally equivalent, while placing a somewhat more functionally equivalent translation in the text itself to promote better readability and ... The longstanding tension between these two different approaches to Bible translation has thus been fundamentally solved ... look over the translator’s shoulder at the very process of translation." ...
... The New English Translation, like the New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible and the New American Bible, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not an update or revision ... The translation and extensive notes were undertaken by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic ... The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide a digital version of a modern English translation over the Internet and on CD-ROM without cost for the user "The NET Bible project ...
... Settling Down in My Wife’s Family Dongyuan Country Place Layers of hills cut off the dust of the world.. ...
... Further information Bible translations and Translation of the Qur'an An important role in history has been played by translation of religious texts ... Buddhist monks who translated the Indian sutras into Chinese often skewed their translations to better reflect China's distinct culture, emphasizing notions such as filial piety ... One of the first recorded instances of translation in the West was the rendering of the Old Testament into Greek in the 3rd century BCE ...
Famous quotes containing the word translation:
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)