Types of Translation

Types of Translation

Due to the continuing evolvement of the translation industry there are now certain terms used to define specialist translations that do not fall under a general category. This brief guide offers an explanation of some of the more common translation terms used.

 Administrative translation 
 
The translation of administrative texts. Although administrative has a very broad meaning, in terms of translation it refers to common texts used within businesses and organisations that are used in day to day management. It can also be stretched to cover texts with similar functions in government. For more information on our administrative translation, see our translation services page or contact one of our team to discuss. 
 
Commercial translation 
 
Commercial translation or professional business translationcovers any sort of document used in the business world such as correspondence, company accounts, tender documents, reports, etc. Commercial translations require specialiast translators with knowledge of terminology used in the business world. 
 
Computer translation 
 
Not to be confused with CAT, computer assisted translations, which refer to translations carried out by software. Computer translation is the translation of anything to do with computers such as software, manuals, help files, apps etc. 
 
Economic translation 
 
Similar to commercial or business translation, economic translation is simply a more specific term used for the translation of documents relating to the field of economics. Such texts are usually a lot more academic in nature. 
 
Financial translation 
 
Financial translation is the translation of texts of a financial nature. Anything from banking to asset management to stocks and bonds could be covered under our financial translation service. 
 
General translation 
 
A general translation is the simplest of translations. A general text means that the language used is not high level and to a certain extent could be in layman's terms. There is no specific or technical terminology used. Most translations carried out fall under this category. 
 
Legal translation 
 
Legal translations are one of the trickiest translations known. At its simplest level it means the translation of legal documents such as statutes, contracts and treaties. 
 
A legal translation will always need specialist attention. This is because law is culture-dependent and requires a translator with an excellent understanding of both the source and target cultures. 
 
Most translation agencies would only ever use professional legal to undertake such work. This is because there is no real margin for error; the mistranslation of a passage in a contract could, for example, have disastrous consequences. 
 
When translating a text within the field of law, the translator should keep the following in mind. The legal system of the source text is structured in a way that suits that culture and this is reflected in the legal language; similarly, the target text is to be read by someone who is familiar with another legal system and its language. 
 
Literary translation 
 
A literary translation is the translation of literature such as novels, poems, plays and poems. 
 
The translation of literary works is considered by many one of the highest forms of translation as it involves so much more than simply translating text. A literary translator must be capable of also translating feelings, cultural nuances, humour and other subtle elements of a piece of work. 
 
Some go as far as to say that literary translations are not really possible. In 1959 the Russian-born linguist Roman Jakobson went as far as to declare that "poetry by definition [was] untranslatable". In 1974 the American poet James Merrill wrote a poem, "Lost in Translation," which in part explores this subject. 
 
Medical translation 
 
A medical translation will cover anything from the medical field from the packaging of medicine to manuals for medical equipments to medical books. 
 
Like legal translation, medical translation is specialisation where a mistranslation can have grave consequences. 
 
Technical translation 
 
A technical translation has a broad meaning. It usually refers to certain fields such as IT or manufacturing and deals with texts such as manuals and instructions. Technical translationsare usually more expensive than general translations as they contain a high amount of terminology that only a specialist translator could deal with..

 Machine translation, which is also known as Computer Aided Translation, is basically the use of software programs which have been specifically designed to translate both verbal and written texts from one language to another.

he idea of machine translation (MT) of natural languages first appeared in the seventeenth century, but became a reality only at the end of the twentieth century. Today, computer programs are widely used to automate the translation process. Although great progress has been made in the field of machine translation, fully automated translations are far from being perfect. Nevertheless, countries continue spending millions of dollars on various automatic translation programs. In the early 1990s, the U.S. government sponsored a competition among MT systems. Perhaps, one of the valuable outcomes of that enterprise was a corpus of manually produced numerical evaluations of MT quality, with respect to a set of reference translations

The importance of Human Translation

Any attempt to replace Human Translation totally by machine translation would certainly face failure for, due to a simple reason, there is no machine translation that is capable of interpretation. For instance, it is only the human translator who is able of interpreting certain cultural components that may exist in the source text and that can not be translated in terms of equivalent terms, just like what automatic translation does, into the language of the target text. In addition, it is widely agreed upon that one of the most difficult tasks in the act of translation is how to keep the same effect left by the source text in the target text. The automatic translation, in this regard, has proved its weakness, most of the time, when compared with a human translation. The human translator is the only subject in a position to understand the different cultural, linguistic and semantic factors contributing to leaving the same effect, that is left in the source text, in the target text.

It is an undeniable fact that automatic translation is regarded as a tool for producing quick and great number of translated texts; nevertheless, the quality of the translation is still much debatable. The automatic translation, for instance, can not usually provide a definite translation for words that bear different vowelized forms such as the Arabic term /kotob/ which means in English "books". The term in many translation programs, when translating from Arabic into English, is confused with the other Arabic term /kataba/ which means in English the verb "to write".

Oral translation is included in the services of almost every translation agency. Interpretation is required at conferences, meetings and in any event involving people that speak different languages. Interpretation is often put in the context of conference interpreting as it is most often used at conferences. It must be remembered that oral translation is provided by an interpreter and written translation by a translator.

Consecutive Interpretation

Consecutive interpretation is oral translation of a speaker?s words during sense-pauses made by the speaker. This type of interpretation is usually required at business negotiations with a limited number of participants and for brief public speeches. At major events with a large number of participants (conferences, seminars, symposia) simultaneous interpretation is used more frequently. This method of interpretation saves time and allows for presentation of speech in multiple languages.

Simultaneous Interpretation

Simultaneous interpretation is oral translation of spoken language into another language at the same time and same rate of speech as the speaker. As a rule, an interpreter is located in a separate booth and the translation is transmitted to earphones provided to each participant.

Simultaneous interpretation has a number of indisputable advantages over consecutive interpretation:

• permits the use of several languages at international events;

• an event takes place «in real time», without unavoidable pauses. The contact with the audience is not interrupted, and it is much easier for listeners to understand the message when they hear it via their earphones in the native language. In addition to these obvious advantages, simultaneous interpretation allows to avoid extra costs associated with additional time of rent.

TYPES OF INTERPRETATION

Consecutive interpreting

Speaker's text is interpreted usually by time slots of 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the difficulty of the text, interpreting by shorter phases is also called parroting. Consecutive interpretation requires no special equipment; interpreters use their notes taken during the speech.

Simultaneous interpreting

Interpretation is performed at interpreter's booth simultaneously with the speaker's presentation and the text in the target language reaches the listeners through special headphones. There are normally at least two interpreters in the interpreter’s booth since one interpreter cannot interpret for more than half an hour on a continuous basis.