Translation

All forms of literature and speech can be translated, including novels, movies, poetry, speeches, and non-fiction. Different areas are of varying difficulty of translation, however. Poetry is almost impossible to accurately translate for it depends as much on form as it does on meaning. Non-fiction, on the other hand, is often very straight forward to translate as meaing is all that is important.

Much non-fiction translating is done by low level workers. This includeds the translation of manuals and other business and professional texts. Many governments also do a great deal of translating. For instance the government of Canada must translate all official documetns into English and French. The European Union has many official languages and must employ a large number of translators.

If the translation of non-fiction works is regarded as a skill the translation of fiction and poetry is much more of an art. In translation something of the original is always lost, a rigorous word for word copy of the text would lose much of the impact of the writing because cultural differences would be ingonerd. Am excellent translator, which are rare and highly sought after by publishes, will always face a delicate balancing act between accuracy and readability.

The translation of religious works has played an important role in world history. For instance the Buddhist monks who translated the Indian sutras into the Chinese language would often skew the translation to better adapt to China's very different culture. Thus notions such as filial piety[?] were stressed.

The translation of the Christian Bible has long been of great import. St. Jerome is still considered one of the greatest translators in histroy for his work on translating the work into Latin. Jerome's translation was used by the Catholic Church for centuries, but even his translation met much controversy when it was released.

The Protestant Reformation saw the translation of the Bible into the local languages of Europe, and act condemned by the Catholic Church and one that had a gret impact on the split between Protestantism and Catholicism. Martin Luther's Bible in German and the King James Bible in English had immense impacts on the religion, culture, and language of those countries.

Machine Translation

In modern times attempts to make electronic translators have met with some success. The goal of converting infomarion from one language to another automatically is a major goal of natural language processing. The international plaza of the internet has been a promising testing ground for these technologies, such as Alta Vista[?]'s Babel Fish[?], which can make information conprehensible, but do not yet threaten the employement of professional translators.

Noted Translators:

• St. Jerome
• Herman of Carinthia- translated Arabic scientific texts in Latin
• Arthur Golding translator of Ovid into English
• Martin Luther
• Johann Heinrich Voss - translated classcial poetry in to German
• Vladimir Nabokov
• David Homel[?] - noted translator of Québécois literature[?] into English

External Links

• The Altavista Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com), an online translator
• Translation Journal (http://www.accurapid.com/journal)