Literal translation, also known as direct translation in everyday usage, has the meaning of the rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-word" (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") rather than conveying the sense of the original. However, in translation studies literal translation has the meaning of technical translation of scientific, technical, technological or legal texts. Other term for literal translation in translation theory is metaphrase and the prasal ("sense" translation) is paraphrase.
When considered a bad practise of conveying word by word (lexeme to lexeme or morpheme to lexeme) translation of non-technical type literal translations has the meaning of mis-translating idioms, for example, or in the context of translating an analytic language to a synthetic language, it renders even the grammar unintelligible.
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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Literal translation. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. |