Are there different kinds or levels of translation?
Yes, although for most purposes a translation should be a fully finished work that reads as if it had been originally written in the target language. Still, there are legitimate forms of translation that come short of this standard. We would classify translations into the following four levels: Word-for-word or gloss. This involves substituting a word in the target language for each word in the source language and not changing the grammatical structure or word order. The output is usually very hard to read and understand by itself. A translation of this type is usually used only in scholarly papers where the focus is on the source language and the gloss is provided along with the source as a convenience to the reader. Automatic. This is a translation generated by a computer program without human intervention. Most such programs attempt to take the translation slightly beyond the word-for-word level. For example, they may conjugate the verbs and make some simple changes in word order. S
