Defining the Landscape of Translation

Abstract

This article is the first in a three-part series on translation quality. The articles build on one another by addressing definitions of translation, quality, and finally translation quality. Concerning the meaning of translation, many definitions have been proposed in the translation-studies literature. This article, however, is not a literature review. Instead, it describes a "landscape" within which various definitions of translation can be "planted.” This landscape is delimited by two axes—namely, scope and specifications—and provides a framework for discussing such questions as (a) the relationship between translation and localization and (b) the role of translation specifications. Within that landscape, this article presents two opposing views about the definition of translation. The authors disagree about which of these views is most useful, but they agree that stakeholders must clearly define translation before they can meaningfully address translation quality.

Keywords

• translation
• localization
• definition
• multimodal translation
• translation-plus
• adaptation