Translation

1. Translation

2. What is translation? • Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalenttarget-language text.[

3. Etymology • The word translation derives from the Latin translatio (which itself comes from trans- and fero, together meaning "to carry across" or "to bring across"). The modern Romance languages use words for translation derived from that source and from the alternative Latin traduco ("to lead across"). The Germanic and Slavic languages likewise use calques based on these Latin sources

4. Theory • The ancient Greeks distinguished between metaphrase (literal translation) and paraphrase. This distinction was adopted by English poet and translatorJohn Dryden (1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts," or equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language:

5. Etymology • In general, translators have sought to preserve the context itself by reproducing the original order of sememes, and hence word order — when necessary, reinterpreting the actual grammatical structure. The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order" languages[11] (e.g. English, French, German) and "free-word-order" languages[12] (e.g., Greek, Latin, Polish, Russian) have been no impediment in this regard.[8]

6. Equivalence • “Formal equivalence" and "dynamicequivalence"are associated with the translator Eugene Nida and were originally coined to describe ways of translating the Bible, but the two approaches are applicable to any translation.

7. "Dynamic equivalence" (or "functional equivalence") conveys the essential thought expressed in a source text — if necessary, at the expense of literality, original sememe and word order, the source text's active vs. passive voice, etc. • By contrast, "formal equivalence" (sought via "literal" translation) attempts to render the text literally, or "word for word" (the latter expression being itself a word-for-word rendering of the classical Latinverbum pro verbo) — if necessary, at the expense of features natural to the target language.

8. Attributes • A competent translator has the following qualities: • a very good knowledge of the language, written and spoken, from which he is translating (the source language); • an excellent command of the language into which he is translating (the target language); • familiarity with the subject matter of the text being translated; • a profound understanding of the etymological and idiomatic correlates between the two languages; and • a finely tuned sense of when to metaphrase ("translate literally") and when to paraphrase, so as to assure true rather than spurious equivalents between the source- and target-language texts.[33]

9. Machine translation • Machine translation (MT) is a process whereby a computer program analyzes a source text and, in principle, produces a target text without human intervention. In reality, however, machine translation typically does involve human intervention, in the form of pre-editing and post-editing.[37]

10. CAT • Computer-assisted translation (CAT), also called "computer-aided translation," "machine-aided human translation" (MAHT) and "interactive translation," is a form of translation wherein a human translator creates a target text with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator

11. Internet • Web-based human translation is generally favored by companies and individuals that seek more accurate translators. In view of the frequent inaccuracy of machine translators, human translation remains the most reliable, most accurate form of translation available

12. Classwork • Write one paragraph discussing either two advantages or disadvantages of human vs. machine translation.

13. Project Language related topics: (should be narrowed down) • -Origins of Language • -Third Culture and Language • -Mlearning and SLLs • -Pocket dictionaries: Would they replace ELLs brain?