Back Letterlike vertaling Afrikaans ترجمة حرفية Arabic Hərfi tərcümə Azerbaijani Літаральны пераклад Byelorussian Даслоўны пераклад BE-TARASK Ма-дарра гоч CE وەرگێڕانی دەقاودەق CKB Traducción literal Spanish Itzulpen literal Basque ترجمه واژهبهواژه Persian
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Literal translation, direct translation, or word-for-word translation is the translation of a text done by translating each word separately without analysing how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence.[1][2]
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).[3]
Literal translation leads to mistranslation of idioms, which can be a serious problem for machine translation.[4]
- ^ "LITERAL | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
- ^ Lu, Wei; Fang, Hong (April 2012). Reconsidering Peter Newmark's Theory on Literal Translation (PDF) (Thesis). Finland: Academy Publications. ISSN 1799-2591. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
- ^ "Multilingual LLM Translation: Evaluating Cultural Nuance in Generative AI". Appen. 18 June 2025. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
- ^ Hutchins, John (June 1995). ""The whisky was invisible", or Persistent myths of MT" (PDF). MT News International (11): 17–18. Archived from the original on 3 January 2021. Retrieved 16 February 2022.