What is translation?

Etymologically, ‘translate’ means to carry across. In context, it could mean carrying across a message or a text. It has also been defined as a process of communication that involves a sender and a receiver. Like any other form of communication, the sender sends a message that is coded in a certain way. This code is received and analyzed or decoded by the receiver before it is understood. Katharina Reiss has defined translation as a “bilingual mediated process of communication, which ordinarily aims at the production of a TL text that is functionally equivalent to an SL text (2 media: SL and TL+1 medium: the translator, who becomes a secondary sender; thus translating: secondary communication)” (Venuti 160).  In other words, translation is a process of communication that involves two languages and in which the translator acts as a mediator. Since the translator is the one who is originally sending the message s/he becomes a ‘secondary sender’ and therefore translation becomes ‘secondary communication’. Thus, translation also goes through many stages before its conclusion. According to Eugene Nida the SL message undergoes analysis by the translator before it is transferred to the TL. It is then restructured according to the TL pattern before it is comprehended. In other words, a message is first decoded by the receiver and then recoded by him/her.