Back Letterlike vertaling Afrikaans ترجمة حرفية Arabic Hərfi tərcümə Azerbaijani Літаральны пераклад Byelorussian Даслоўны пераклад BE-X-OLD Ма-дарра гоч CE وەرگێڕانی دەقاودەق CKB Traducción literal Spanish Itzulpen literal Basque ترجمه تحت‌اللفظی Persian

Literal translation

Not to be confused with literary translation or loan translation.

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Literal translation, direct translation, or word-for-word translation is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence.[1]

In translation theory, another term for literal translation is metaphrase (as opposed to paraphrase for an analogous translation). It is to be distinguished from an interpretation (done, for example, by an interpreter).

Literal translation leads to mistranslation of idioms, which can be a serious problem for machine translation.[2]

  1. ^ "LITERAL | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  2. ^ Hutchins, John (June 1995). ""The whisky was invisible", or Persistent myths of MT" (PDF). MT News International (11): 17–18. Archived from the original on 3 January 2021. Retrieved 16 February 2022.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

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