Literal translation

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.

See also

• Dynamic and formal equivalence
• Semantic translation
• Transliteration

Further reading

• Olive Classe, Encyclopedia of literary translation into English, vol. 1, Taylor & Francis, 2000, ISBN 1-884964-36-2, p. viii.