Translation process

During the translation process, a translator seeks to establish equivalences between a source text and a target language. This process can be expressed as interpreting the meaning of the original text and re-encoding this meaning in the target language.

To extract the meaning of a text, the translator needs first recognize its component "translation units", that is to say, the section of text to be processed as a cognitive unit. A translation unit could be a word, a phrase or even one or more sentences. Behind this evidently simple procedure there is a complex cognitive operation. To extract the complete meaning of the original text, the translator needs the equal in-depth knowledge to re-extract the meaning in the objective language.

Actually, many sources maintain that the translator's knowledge of the objective language is more important, and requires being deeper, than his knowledge of the source language. For this reason, numerous translators translate into a language of which they are native speakers. This process needs good knowledge about the grammar, syntax, idioms and semantics, of the origin language.

Note: Using machines for the translation process is helpful but not recommended when you want accurate translations.