Linguistics Stack Exchange
Linguistics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [translation]

Use this tag for questions about the practice, techniques, and methodology of translation — communicating a source language A in a target language B. Don't use this tag for questions asking to translate a particular word, phrase, or text piece, as such questions are explicitly defined off-topic.

116 questions
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Is J. R. R. Tolkien's "translation" scheme found in real life?

A summary of J. R. R. Tolkien's "translation" methodology: J. R. R. Tolkien was best known for his fantasy world - Middle-earth. He almost always presented his works as translated from ancient documents that somehow were passed down to him,…
Eugene
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Is there any formally recognised concept of a “standard” translation?

It’s common to hear in translation theory that when you translate a work you change it fundamentally, for example because words have multiple meanings and very specific connotations depending on their context of use, so every translation is in some…
Julius Hamilton
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How to perform word by word translations?

I want to present German users English texts and they need to know the meaning of each individual word. I was thinking to use Google Translate API or Bing Translate API, and request a translation for each word in a text. But they respond with only…
Philip
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Is there a word that describes when supposed word translations have different meaning?

I've been becoming increasingly aware of words between English and Spanish that look so alike that they seem like they must be translations, and even Google Translate provides them as such. However, looking at the definitions, they're different.…
JoL
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Experiment on reiterated translation

I would like to know whether this is feasible or has already been done by someone it's possibile to predict its outcome The experiment I came up with is the following: a random text written in language A is chosen, alongisde a target language B.…
Enrico
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"Telephone game" effect when translating between languages

Let's say there are three people, Bob, John and Jane. There are also three languages, L1, L2 and L3. John is a fluent speaker of L1 and L2. Jane is a fluent speaker of L2 and L3. Bob only knows L1, but wants to learn L3. John, to help his friend…
zxz
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How many usual kinds of translation are there?

I heard of transliteration, loan translation, and semantics translation. I learned a bit about them by searching on the Internet, but am not completely sure about their relationships and differences. Are they translation at the levels of letter,…
Tim
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Origin of mistake when a Dutch says "You are true."

Speaking English, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, mistakenly said you are true instead of you are right. But where does the confusion comes from? 'You are right is' is 'je hebt gelijk' and 'True' and 'right' are quite different words in Dutch:…
Quora Feans
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Major translation theories

I need some help from a person who have a degree from Translations. I am looking for a brief informations about a major translation theories in English version but everytime I find something really useful, it turns out to be very comprehensive and I…
Irina
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Decisions of Detail

While reading " Thinking Arabic Translation" there's one paragraph that I haven't understood: Decision of Detail: Reasoned decisions concerning the specific problems of grammar, lexis encountered in translating particular expressions in their…
Afnan
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What are the most written/read languages on the internet?

I'm developing a large chat application; the public beta had over sixty-five thousand participants, so I need the final version to be complete. Hence I am asking this question. My application needs to work in all the languages that I can expect my…
cbroughton
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In how small chunks can I chop up a text for piece by piece translation?

I'm creating a piece language learning software, which will include a component that lets the user read texts with a translation on the side. The texts will be chopped up into segments, and have the feature that, if you hold your mouse over a…
zxz
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Helping to compare 'descriptive power' of languages

Hello to everyone who read this! And sorry for my English... I have a discussion on some particular internet forum which is now about a languages. In short: I saying that all languages have basically the same ability to describe something. In…
Frostysh
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The Phoenician or Punic Term for Captain

So, I have been looking around for a few days now into finding what title the Phoenicians, or at least the Carthaginians, used for their ship officers. My interest is due to the fact that the word captain, derived from Ancient Greek, is similar in…
Punicplum
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Is it possible given a set of translated words from a foreign to predict the translation for an untranslated word?

Basically, will knowing some fairly large set of words and phrases and their translations, could a computer perhaps predict what the word for perhaps a very basic word, like "eye?" Alternatively, if given a large number of words and their…
releseabe
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