Types of Translation

Roman Jakobson in his 1959 work On Linguistic Works of Translation states that there are Three  types of translation:

1) intralingual - rewording or paraphrasing, summarizing, expanding or commenting within a language;

2) interlingual - the traditional concept of translation from ST to TT or the "shifting of meaning from one language to another";

3) intersemiotic - the changing of a written text into a different form, such as art or dance.

As translators, we deal with the following types of translation:

1- Word-For-Word Translation; i.e., Scientific Translation: Transferring the meaning of each individual word in a text to another, equivalent word in the target language. Sometimes called 'Literal Translation'. While this is often clearly appropriate for dictionaries, it can produce very for complex passages of text. Hence, legal translation falls into this category.

2. Literary translation: Translation of literary works (novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc.) is taken into account a literary pursuit in its title .

3. Free Translation: Translating loosely from the original. Contrasted with word for word or literal translation, this might be the simplest method counting on the foremost appropriate unit of translation involved. I personally would incorporate journalistic translation under this type because it contains editing, rewriting and combing different sources of the same news item into one story.

4. Descriptive translation: One must bear in mind that it is the notional meaning of the source language unit and not always its morphological nature or structural form that is to be rendered in the target language. As a result, the target linguistic unit , which equivalently/faithfully conveys the denotative/connotative meaning of the corresponding language unit might not necessarily belong to an equivalent language stratification level. Depending on the notion expressed by the language word/lexeme, it's going to be conveyed within the target language sometimes through a word-combination or maybe through a sentence, i.e., descriptively. Descriptive translating/interpreting is very often employed to render the sense/meaning of idioms/phraseologisms, which have no equivalents in the target language. Descriptive translation is additionally employed in foot-notes to elucidate obscure places in narration.

5. Antonymic translation is used for the sake of achieving faithfulness in conveying content or the required expressiveness of sense units. It represents how of rendering when an affirmative in structure linguistic unit (word, word-combination or sentence) is conveyed via a negative in sense or structure but identical in content language unit, or vice versa: a negative in sense or structure sense unit is translated via an affirmative sense unit.

The antonymic device is employed in the following cases: a) when in the target language there is no direct equivalent for the sense unit of the source language; b) when the sense unit of the source language has two negations of its own which create an affirmation; c) in order to achieve the necessary expressiveness in narration; d) in order to avoid the use of the same or identical structures close to each other in a text (stylistic aim and means).

6. Back-translation: If one text is a translation of another, a back-translation is a translation of the translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. In the context of MT , this is often also called a "round-trip translation." Comparison of a back-translation to the first text is usually used as a top quality check on the original translation, but it is certainly far from infallible and the reliability of this technique has been disputed.

7. Machine Translation: MT (MT) is automatic translation, during which a computer takes over all the work of translating. Obviously, a computer will work much faster (and is cheaper) than a human being. It can be a useful method if the purpose of the translation is a limited one; for example, to gain a rough idea of what a text contains ('gisting') and/or to process large numbers of documents very rapidly.

MT works best on highly repetitive texts, involving a restricted range of vocabulary. Typically, these are highly intricate scientific or technical texts. It does less well on more general or varied texts, and those involving a high degree of abstraction, and with these often yields useless results. The problem here is that it fails to cope with speech acts.

Even on repetitive texts, the finished output often must be checked to by a person's translator, and ranging degrees of post-editing could be necessary.

Another factor is that the language - target language pair. MT works best also where languages are of an identical type (isolating: English - Spanish) or related (German - English) or closely related (Norwegian - Danish). At the time of writing, the obvious advantage of using MT to translate from one dialect to another in the same language (e.g. US English - British English) seems to have been overlooked but, using the same logic, it should work well on this.

8. CAT: Computer-assisted translation (CAT), also called "computer-aided translation," "machine-aided human translation (МАНТ)" and "interactive translation," may be a sort of translation wherein a person's translator creates a target text with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator.

Computer-assisted translation can include standard dictionary and grammar software. The term, however, normally refers to a variety of specialised programs available to the translator, including translation-memory, terminology-management, concordance, and alignment programs.

With the internet, translation software can help non-native-speaking individuals understand web pages published in other languages. Whole-page translation tools are of limited utility, however, since they offer only a limited potential understanding of the original author's intent and context; translated pages tend to be more humorous and confusing than enlightening.

Interactive translations with pop-up windows are becoming more popular. These tools show several possible translations of each word or phrase. Human operators merely got to select the right translation because the mouse glides over the foreign-language text. Possible definitions can be grouped by pronunciation.

9. Pseudo-translation is a technique needed for pseudolocalization that is used in software localization. In contrast to the standard translation process it's the method of making text that mimics a far off language without the goal of expressing the source text meaning in the target language.

One approach to pseudo-translation involves the addition of special characters typical for the locale of the target language (for example a diacritic sort of a German Umlaut 'a'), as well as changing the amount of characters belonging to the text. In that approach, the text is pseudo-translated during a way that permits to acknowledge the first source text. Another pseudo-translation solution involves the utilization of MT technology, which not only generates the required special characters but also gives developers an honest indication of the length of a string in a particular target language.

Pseudo-translation precedes the particular translation within the software development process. Its purpose is to check that the software is ready for translation.