Translation Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Etymology== [[File:Rosetta Stone BW.jpeg|thumb|upright|left|[[Rosetta Stone]], a [[secular icon]] for the art of translation<ref>"Rosetta Stone", ''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 5th ed., 1994, p. 2,361.</ref>]] The [[English language|English]] word "translation" derives from the [[Latin]] word {{Lang|la|translatio}},<ref>{{cite book|last1=Vélez|first1=Fabio|title=Antes de Babel|pages=3–21}}</ref> which comes from ''[[Wiktionary:trans#Latin|trans]]'', "across" + ''[[Wiktionary:fero#Latin|ferre]]'', "to carry" or "to bring" (''-latio'' in turn coming from ''latus'', the [[past participle]] of ''ferre''). Thus ''translatio'' is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across"—in this case, of a text from one language to another.<ref name="The Translator p. 83">[[Christopher Kasparek]], "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 83.</ref> Some [[Slavic languages]] and the [[Germanic languages]] (other than [[Dutch language|Dutch]] and [[Afrikaans]]) have [[calque#Loan translation: ''translātiō'' and ''trāductiō''|calque]]d their words for the [[concept]] of "translation" on ''translatio'', substituting their respective Slavic or Germanic root words for the Latin roots.<ref name="The Translator p. 83"/><ref>The Dutch for "translation" is ''vertaling'', from the [[verb]] ''vertalen'', itself derived from ''taal'', "language", plus [[prefix]] ''ver-''. The Afrikaans for "translation", derived from the Dutch, is ''vertaling''.</ref>{{efn|The Dutch ''overzetting'' (noun) and ''overzetten'' (verb) in the sense of "translation" and "to translate", respectively, are considered archaic. While ''omzetting'' may still be found in early modern literary works, it has been replaced entirely in modern Dutch by ''vertaling''.}}<ref>[http://gtb.inl.nl/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M051812&lemmodern=overzetting "overzetting"] in [[Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal]], ''[[Dutch Language Union#Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal|IvdNT]]''</ref> The remaining Slavic languages instead calqued their words for "translation" from an alternative Latin word, {{lang|la|trāductiō}}, itself derived from {{wikt-lang|la|trādūcō}} ("to lead across" or "to bring across")—from {{lang|la|trans}} ("across") + {{wikt-lang|la|dūcō}}, ("to lead" or "to bring").<ref name="The Translator p. 83"/> The [[West Slavic languages|West]] and [[East Slavic languages]] (except for [[Russian language|Russian]]) adopted the {{lang|la|translātiō}} pattern, whereas Russian and the [[South Slavic languages]] adopted the {{lang|la|trāductiō}} pattern. The [[Romance language]]s, deriving directly from Latin, did not need to ''calque'' their equivalent words for "translation"; instead, they simply adapted the second of the two alternative Latin words, {{lang|la|trāductiō}}.<ref name="The Translator p. 83"/> The [[Ancient Greek language|Ancient Greek]] term for "translation", {{lang|grc|μετάφρασις}} (''metaphrasis'', "a speaking across"), has supplied English with "[[metaphrase]]" (a "[[literal translation|literal]]", or "word-for-word", translation)—as contrasted with "[[paraphrase]]" ("a saying in other words", from {{lang|grc|παράφρασις}}, ''paraphrasis'').<ref name="The Translator p. 83" /> "Metaphrase" corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "[[#Equivalence|formal equivalence]]"; and "paraphrase", to "[[#Equivalence|dynamic equivalence]]".<ref name="Kasparek p. 84">Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 84.</ref> Strictly speaking, the concept of metaphrase—of "word-for-word translation"—is an [[Perfection|imperfect]] concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, "metaphrase" and "paraphrase" may be useful as ''ideal'' concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.{{efn|"Ideal concepts" are useful as well in other fields, such as [[physics]] and [[chemistry]], which include the concepts of perfectly solid bodies, perfectly rigid bodies, perfectly plastic bodies, perfectly black bodies, perfect crystals, perfect fluids, and perfect gases.<ref>[[Władysław Tatarkiewicz]], ''On [[Perfection]]'' (first published in Polish in 1976 as ''O doskonałości''); English translation by [[Christopher Kasparek]] subsequently serialized in 1979–1981 in ''Dialectics and Humanism: The Polish Philosophical Quarterly'', and reprinted in Władysław Tatarkiewicz, ''On Perfection'', Warsaw University Press, 1992.</ref>}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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