Working With Meaning Not Words

Translators work with meaning. Their job is to use language to express meaning in a specified target language to match the original source language text.

There are almost always multiple approaches to expressing meaning. Translation is therefore not a mechanical replacement of words in one language with equivalent words in another language (such as a machine might attempt).

 

Sometimes translation clients try to match up source and target language words in a translation in order to evaluate a completed project. It’s not an effective evaluation approach.

 

Consider the following sentence which appears on our website describing our company:

• Founded in 2007, we work with a select group of commercial and individual clients to support them with high quality translation and other language services.

Two alternative ways of expressing equivalent meaning in English are:

• We work with professional and individual customers to deliver high quality translation and language services since our beginning in 2007.
• We provide high quality translation and language services to professional and individual clients ever since the company began in 2007.

Different words. Equivalent (or near-equivalent) meaning.

If each of the above three sentences were translated into Spanish we would see three different looking Spanish sentences. Each would be different but still express equivalent meaning.

Sometimes translation clients try to match up source and target language words in a translation in order to evaluate a completed project. It’s not an effective evaluation approach. The above example sentences help explain why.