TRANSLATION

 Definition : the process of translating words

or text from one language into another.
 Translation is the communication of the

meaning of a source-language text by means

of an equivalent target-language text
 the process of translating words or text from

one language into another, the process of

moving something from one place to another.
 Intralingual translation: Translation within a
language which would involve explaining it in
words of the same language
 Interlingual translation: Translation from one
language into another or reinterpretation of
the message in another linguistic code
 Intersemiotic translation: Translation from
one linguistic system to another which means
the transference of meaning from a verbal to
a non-verbal system or from one medium to
another
Problems of Translation
 Structure of the Language
The structure of sentences in English and other
languages may be different.
For example, in English the adjective is placed
before the noun, but in French the adjective comes
after the noun.
Language is complex and ever-evolving. The
translator has to know the exact structure in each
language, and use the appropriate structure, and
they have to ensure that the translation is
performed without changing the meaning as well.
Different Culture
 Often, colloquialism is woven into formal language, making the
translator’s task very difficult indeed.
 The larger the region where the language is spoken, the more the
dialects there are likely to be, and the more colloquial words you are
likely to find – except in technical documents translations, legal
document translations, or translations of medical transcripts.

 The culture practised by the speakers of each language may also be

vastly different; for example, the British are famous for their dry,
biting sarcasm, which is their brand of humor. However, this kind of
sarcasm may not be appreciated in not just a country speaking a
different language, but even another country where they speak
English. Then the problem arises as to how to translate accurately
without hurting sentiments or angering the target audience.
 Ambiguity
 In the best of all possible worlds(as far as

most Natural Language Processing is

concerned, anyway) every word would have
one and only one meaning.
 But, as we all know, this is not the case. When

a word has more than one meaning, it is said

to be lexically ambiguous.
Lexical and Structural Mismatches

 At the start of the previous section we said that, in the best of

all possible worlds for NLP, every word would have exactly
one sense. While this is true for most NLP, it is an
exaggeration as regards MT. It would be a better world, but
not the best of all possible worlds, because we would still be
faced with difficult translation problems.
 Some of these problems are to do with lexical differences
between languages — differences in the ways in which
languages seem to classify the world, what concepts they
choose to express by single words, and which they choose
not to lexicalize. We will look at some of these directly.
 Other problems arise because different languages use
different structures for the same purpose, and the same
structure for different purposes. In either case, the result is
that we have to complicate the translation process. I