An In-Depth Look at Translation

As many professional translation companies and freelance translation services know, human translation is an act of interpreting the meaning behind a source text so that a faithful reproduction of it that is, an equivalent text that communicates the same message in another language could be produced. The original document to be translated is referred to as the source text, while the language that it’s supposed to be converted is called the target language. Ergo, the final product or translated text is occasionally termed the target text as well.

Professional translation firms should consider the constraints and limitations of their work which usually includes the rules of grammar between two tongues, shifting context from one language to another, idioms, figures of speech, and writing conventions when rendering their translation services. To be true, sense-for-sense translation is the order of the day for any translation agency worth their salt.

Translation History and Etymology

The process of human translation is actually older than people think; experts believe that it may be as old as written literature, at the very least. This is backed up by the existence of Asiatic translations of the Sumerian Epic known as Gilgamesh (one of the oldest literary works ever) during the second millennium BCE. To be more precise, the Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read by authors of such literary classics as the Iliad and the Bible, which inspired them to do their own translation work.

Etymologically speaking, "translation" can be interpreted as "bringing across" or "carrying across", which succinctly describes how the process works in a lingual sense. Furthermore, the Latin word "translatio" is derived from the perfect passive participle "translatum" of "transferre" ("to transfer"). Indeed, the modern Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages have developed their own respective words for this process based on the Latin model: either from "transferre" or "tranducere" ("to lead across").

Translation Nuances

A common translation myth states that every word in one language has a natural equivalent in another language. If that were the case, then people should forget human translation and start using computers to do this "straightforward mechanical process". Word-for-word translations usually disregard important factors such as correct grammar, proper context, and even local idiomatic expressions.

In other words, word-for-word translation (especially machine translation) usually results in gaffe-filled blocks of gibberish most of the time, although there are some texts that can be straightforwardly translated using this method. Moreover, the risk for spillovers of the usages and grammar of one language into another language is particularly high during the translation process, especially since both tongues lie within the solitary brain of the translator.

Spillovers are most familiar to bilingual communities as linguistic hybrids like Engrish (Japanese-English), Portuñol (Portuguese-Spanish), Spanglish (Spanish-English), and Franglais (French-English). At any rate, it should be fairly clear to novices in the translation industry that translation is hardly an exact science; it’s a lot more dynamic than one would expect. On that note, it’s not open to interpretation either. Translation must strike a balance between faithfulness to the source text and adaptability to the target language in order to succeed.



Aunes Oversettelser AS has been in the business for 26 years, and we are specialized in technical translations. We are specializing in the Nordic languages, and can offer services into Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Icelandic. The premier translation agency for Norway and the Nordic region! Technical translation services for businesses in the Nordic countries and translation agencies world wide.