Дословный перевод: теория и практика

Word for word translation of a text

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. 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.

The term "literal translation" often appeared in the titles of 19th century English translations of the classical Bible and other texts.

Word for word translations ("cribs", "ponies", or "trots") are sometimes prepared for a writer who is translating a work written in a language they do not know. For example, Robert Pinsky is reported to have used a literal translation in preparing his translation of Dante's Inferno (1994), as he does not know Italian. Similarly, Richard Pevear worked from literal translations provided by his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, in their translations of several Russian novels.

Literal translation can also denote a translation that represents the precise meaning of the original text but does not attempt to convey its style, beauty, or poetry. There is, however, a great deal of difference between a literal translation of a poetic work and a prose translation. A literal translation of poetry may be in prose rather than verse but also be error free. Charles Singleton's 1975 translation of the Divine Comedy is regarded as a prose translation.

The term literal translation implies that it is probably full of errors, since the translator has made no effort to (or is unable to) convey correct idioms or shades of meaning, for example, but it can also be a useful way of seeing how words are used to convey meaning in the source language.

A literal English translation of the German phrase "Ich habe Hunger" would be "I have hunger" in English, but this is clearly not a phrase that would generally be used in English, even though its meaning might be clear. Literal translations in which individual components within words or compounds are translated to create new lexical items in the target language (a process also known as "loan translation") are called calques, e. g., beer garden from German
The literal translation of the Italian sentence, "So che questo non va bene" ("I know that this is not good"), produces "Know(I) that this not goes(it) well", which has English words and Italian grammar.

Often, first generation immigrants create something of a literal translation in how they speak their parents' native language. This results in a mix of the two languages that is something of a pidgin. Many such mixes have specific names, e. g., Spanglish or Denglisch. For example, American children of German immigrants are heard using "rockingstool" from the German word instead of "rocking chair".

Literal translation of idioms is a source of translators' jokes. One such joke, often told about machine translation, translates "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (an allusion to Mark 14:38) into Russian and then back into English, getting "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten". This is not an actual machine translation error, but rather a joke which dates back to 1956 or 1958. Another joke in the genre transforms "out of sight, out of mind" to "blind idiot" or "invisible idiot".