Significance and Scope of Translation
Translation turns a text of source language(SL) into a correct and understandable version of target language(TL) without losing the suggestion of the original. Many people think that being bilingual is all that is needed to be a translator. That is not true. Being bilingual is an important prerequisite, no doubt, but translation skills are built and developed on the basis of one’s own long drawn-out communicative and writing experiences in both languages. As a matter of fact translation is a process based on the theory of extracting the meaning of a text from its present form and reproduce that with a different form of a second language.
It is required that translators meet three requirements, which are:
Familiarity with the source language, (SL)
Familiarity with the target language, (TL)
Familiarity with the subject matter to perform the job successfully.
Based on this concept, the translator discovers the meaning behind the forms in the source language (SL) and does his best to reproduce the same meaning in the target language (TL) using the TL forms and structures to the best of his knowledge. Naturally and supposedly what changes is the form and the code and what should remain unchanged is the meaning and the message. Therefore, one of may discern the most common definition of translation, i.e., the selection of the nearest equivalent for a language unit in the SL in a target language.
Computers are already being used to translate one language into another, but humans are still involved in the process either though pre-writing or post-editing. There is no way that a computer can ever be able to translate languages the way a human could since language uses metaphor/imagery to convey a particular meaning. Translating is more than simply looking up a few words in a dictionary. A quality translation requires a through knowledge of both the source language and the target language.
Translation is more than just replacing words. A translator needs to be able to transfer meaning from one language to another in a way that sounds natural in the new language (the “target language”). Since different languages express ideas in different ways this is more challenging than it may sound. For important translations, such as translation of a company website, it is therefore safer to do to a professional.
