Translation and Interpretation confuse many scholars, now differentiate them by reading this document.

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TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION
TRANSLATION is a process by which ideas that are in one language are represented by words
of a different language. Is the process where the meaning of expressions in one language is
turned into the meaning of another language.
The language from which the information is taken is called source language (SL) and the one
into which the meaning is turned is called Target language (TL)
INTERPRETATION involves the transfer of messages from one language into the other in form
of speech. Interpretation involves oral presentation of what one person says in one language into
another.
THE TRANSLATION PRINCIPLES
I. The translator has to be very competent in both of the source language and the target one.
II. The translator has to understand the field covered by the source text, for example, a
science text will be translated correctly if the translator has an understanding of the field.
III. The translator has to consider the style used by the person who wrote the text in the
source language (SL)
IV. Some content items in both the source language and the target language (TL) are not
easily translatable. This is because it is not always the case that there is one-to-one
correspondence of vocabulary in two languages involved. Eg nakupenda/ I love you (one
word, three words).
V. The translator has to consider his/her views and prejudices sometimes what is translated
is biased, personal, subjective or cultural.
VI. Considering the expectations of the readers.
METHODS OF TRANSLATION
I. Word to word translation; this is a translation method in which TL words are
immediately below SL words. The SL word order is not changed.
For example,
M – toto m - zuri a – li – kula nyama yote
3ps child 3ps good agr past eat meat all
This means: the good child ate all the meat.
II. Semantic translation; this is a translation method in which the translator is said to
be biased to the source language in that he/she translates every word in SL but
using grammatical features of TL. The emphasis in this type of translation is on
the meaning of the text in SL.
Example

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English: he went up to his home
Kiswahili: alikwenda mpaka nyumbani kwake
III. Communicative translation; this is a kind of translation that pays a lot of attention
to the contextual meaning of the original text.
For example,
English: do not cry over spilt milk
Kiswahili: maji yakimwagika hayazoleki
WHAT THINGS ARE DIFFICULT TO TYRANSLATE?
1. Proper nouns
Eg;
Kiswahili: yohana amekwenda mbeya leo asubuhi
English: john has gone to mbeya this morning
2. Idioms
 Yule mzee amekula chumvi nyingi
 Aliposikia mlango unagongwa, alipigwa na butwaa
 Yule anajua sana kupiga hesabu
 Ali alinizaba kibao
 Baada ya dakika tano tangu kuanza sherehe, musa alivaa miwani akawa
anapepesuka
 Alinikata ulimi kabla sijamaliza
 That old man is very aged
 He was very surprised to hear the knock at the door
 That person is very good at calculations
 Ali slapped me
 Only five minutes after the start of the ceremony, Moses was very drunk
and he started to straggler
 He cut me short when I was talking
3. Proverbs
4. Abbreviations
5. Trade and company names
Names of newspapers are not translated.

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THE ACTUAL TRANSLATION
1. Read the text to be translated to get the general idea that it contains
2. Look for dictionaries both technical and general purpose ones
3. Translate the first draft. Remember that we do not translate straight away. We
rather translate stage wise.
4. Revise the translation by making improvement to the first draft. This gives you
the second draft.
5. Write the final draft. After you have made all necessary revisions, you are advised
to write your final draft, ready for submission to the client.
QUALITIES OF GOOD TRANSLATION
1. A good translation should be capable of being translated back
2. Performance testing. Asking question from people speaking two different languages
3. Knowledge testing.