the.com/translation
the art of betraying one language to be faithful to another.
means The act of rendering text or speech from one language into another, carrying meaning across the gap between them.
from From Latin translatio, "a carrying across," built from trans- ("across") and the verb ferre ("to carry") — its past participle latus gives us the -lation. So a translation is literally something carried over from one shore of language to another, and you can feel the same root in transfer and transport.
- untranslatable
- German has a word for tree-poking with sticks: Baumstreichen myth aside, many exist
- septuagint
- 70 scholars allegedly produced identical Bible translations independently
- false friends
- Spanish embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed
- machine gap
- Early systems turned 'spirit is willing' into 'vodka is good'
- lost works
- Aristotle survived Europe only via Arabic retranslations
for instance
rosetta stone — egyptian decree inscribed in three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic, greek) enabling decipherment of ancient egyptian writing, 196 bce
penguin classics — series publishing 2000+ classic texts in new translations across 60+ languages since 1946