Understanding different types of translation

John Carl
4 min readNov 16, 2022

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If you have been pursuing a career as a professional translator or been considering translation services, you may have questions like “what are the types of translation.” We will first learn why machine translation is not so prevalent now.

Why can’t you rely on machine translations?

Machine translations like Google Translate are popular translation tools nowadays. Machine translation can be relied upon for simple and day-to-day translation but not for business documents or important papers.

Most businesses that require translations need the entire document translated, so this kind of translation, such as document translation, financial translation, or judicial translation, requires expert human translators.

Connect with a human translator to get accurate, high-quality, affordable Urdu translations.

In this blog, we will understand the four diverse types of translation and how they function.

However, it is essential to realize that translation is a wide area, which means that if you require it, you could break down the varied types of translation into many different categories.

The four most popular translation types are as follows:

· Literary translation

· Professional translation

· Technical translation

· Administrative translation

Different types of translation

1. Literary Translation

This translation concerns the translation of literary works such as plays, poetry, tales, etc. This type of translation is often viewed as the most complete or difficult since the translator must accurately convey the emotion, content, words, and tone of the emotion conveyed by the words.

By this, we also mean that you should be aware of the cultures of both languages well enough to interpret any emotion, humor, or other such aspects in a piece of work exactly.

The amount of expertise and information required for this is significant. Also, it may still be tough even after that, as some cases have no suitable translations. For instance, in poetry, when the rhyming of puns or words is used to add more wordplay, it is often found that it does not function in the target language.

2. Professional translation

A legal translation or medical translation are two instances of professional translation. The main aim is to ensure that all the materials are translated as accurately as possible.

However, precision is important for any specialized translation, mainly in sectors where the implication of errors might be catastrophic, such as legal or medical translation, where the costs of inaccuracies could be terrible.

3. Technical translations

Technical translation involves translating business technical content like technical training, user guides, instruction manual, engineering documents, etc.

These documents will generally need technical translation services as the translator has to comprehend the topic well to ensure they can tell the user precisely what they should do.

The translator also sometimes has to change the image so that it can be understood by the target audience and understand the formatting requirements.

If you are looking for technical translation, you must select a transcriptionist or company that is experienced and comfortable with your specific industry.

4. Administrative translation

This translation type is used for the management text and documents of regional or corporate business organizations. It can be measured as a sub-translation type of professional translation. However, not all administrative translations are professional, so it does not quite work that way.

Other types of translation

There are infinite ways to break down the world of translation into diverse types. Here are some other translation types as mentioned below:

· Machine translation

· Website translation

· Judicial translation

· Script translation

· Multimedia translation

· Financial translation

· Commercial translation

· Legal translation

· Medical translation

Some important translations that are extremely prevalent in the 21st century are

Software localization: The major thing to translate in software is the user interface, but software localization is wider than just the user interface. It includes help files, system messages, error messages, etc. The content needs to be adapted here to suit the target audience.

Commercial translation: It is the kind of translation that necessitates types of translators who possess specific skills, like the industry to which the business belongs and knowledge of the business jargon, and the industry to which the business fits.

The type of text in translating commercial documents could include memos, company accounts, tender documents, correspondence, business, and so on.

Medical translation: It involves any medical content related to the patient. It can be software, instructions, labels, and content that is product related, like quality management certificates, clinical trial paperwork, research papers, etc., generally needing a medical translation.

It is essential that the translation agencies are in-country professionals, have the requisite knowledge, and are experienced.

Website translation: It is about documents, webpages, subtitles for videos, website copy, etc. Here you will also need to change things like address layouts, currencies, and formats so that it appeals to diverse target audiences.

Wrapping up

Are you looking for translation services and localization solutions? Connect with Acadestudio for accurate, affordable, and high-quality Thai translation and Slovenian translations in over 99+ global languages. Not just translation, we provide subtitling, voice-over, interpretation, localization solution, transcription, etc. services.

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John Carl
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Hello, this is John Carl. I work as a translation expert at Acadestudio which provides website translation services.