Sense-for-sense translation is the oldest

norm Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envir ...

for translating. It fundamentally means translating the meaning of each whole sentence before moving on to the next, and stands in normative opposition to word-for-word translation (also known as

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 studies, trans ...

History

Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...

, a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

, and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

coined the term "sense-for-sense" when he developed this translation method when was tasked by Pope Damasus to review the existing translations of the Gospel and produce a more reliable Latin version. He described this method in his "Letter to Pammachius", where he said that, "except of course in the case of

Holy Scripture Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual prac ...

, where even the

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

contains a mystery," he translates ''non verbum e verbo sed sensum de sensu'': not word for word but sense for sense. He adopted a framework that corrected the mistakes of previous translators as well as the alterations of critical scholars and the errors made by careless copyists by collecting the oldest Greek manuscripts, which he compared with the Old Latin versions, and translated the scripture into a version that is close as possible to the original meaning. Jerome did not invent the concept of sense-for-sense translation. It is believed that it was first proposed by

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

in ''

De optimo genere oratorum ''De Optimo Genere Oratorum'', "On the Best Kind of Orators", is a work from Marcus Tullius Cicero written in 46 BCE between two of his other works, ''Brutus'' and the '' Orator ad M. Brutum''. Cicero attempts to explain why his view of orator ...

'' ("The Best Kind of Orator"). In this text, he said that in translating from Greek to Latin, "I did not think I ought to count them out to the reader like coins, but to pay them by weight, as it were." Cicero did not mention sense-for-sense in his works but it is considered to be a type of "segmental" theory, which is attributed to him and Horace. This translation approach is based on segmentation, which considers the how long a segment (word, phrase, or sentence) is before moving on to the next. Jerome was not the originator of the term "word-for-word" either. It has possibly also been borrowed from

as well, or possibly from

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

, who warned the writer interested in retelling ancient tales in an original way ''Nec verbo verbum curabit reddere / fidus interpretes'': "not to try to render them word for word ike somefaithful translator." Some have read that passage in Horace differently.

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...

in 510 CE and

Johannes Scotus Eriugena John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born ( – c. 877) was an Irish people, Irish Neoplatonism, Neoplatonist Philosophy, philosopher, Theology, theologian and poet of the Early M ...

in the mid-9th century read it to mean that translating literally is "the fault/blame of the faithful interpreter/translator," and fear that they have incurred it.

Burgundio of Pisa Burgundio of Pisa, sometimes erroneously styled "Burgundius", was a 12th century Italian jurist. He was an ambassador for Pisa at Constantinople in 1136. He was a professor in Paris, and assisted at the Lateran Council in 1179, dying at a very ad ...

in the 1170s and Sir Richard Sherburne in 1702 recognize that Horace is advising not translators but original writers, but still assume that he is calling ''all'' translation literal. Finally,

John Denham John Denham may refer to: * John Denham (died 1556 or later), English MP for Shaftesbury * John Denham (judge), (1559–1639), father of the poet below, and one of the Ship Money judges * John Denham (poet) (1615–1669), English poet * John Denham ...

in 1656 and

André Lefevere André Alphons Lefevere (1945 – 27 March 1996) was a translation theorist. He had studied at the University of Ghent (1964–1968) and then obtained his PhD at the University of Essex in 1972. When he died of acute leukemia, he was Professor of ...

in 1992 take Horace to be warning translators against translating literally.For Boethius, Eriugena, Burgundio, and Denham, see Robinson, ed., ''Western Translation Theory'', 35, 37, 42, and 156. For Sherburne, see T. R. Steiner, ''English Translation Theory, 1650–1800'' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1975), 89. André Lefevere's translation of Horace appears in Lefevere, ed., ''Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook'' (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 15: "Do not worry about rendering word for word, faithful translator, but render sense for sense." This of course not only makes Horace's advice for the writer into advice for the translator, but anachronistically imports Jerome's coinage back into Horace's dictum, which actually preceded it by four centuries. For discussion, see also Douglas Robinson, ''Who Translates'' (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 170–174.

Similar concepts

Paraphrase

John Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...

’s 1680 preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles, he proposed dividing translation into three parts called: metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation. Metaphrase is word-for-word and line by line translation from one language into another. Paraphrase is sense-for-sense translation where the message of the author is kept but the words are not so strictly followed as the sense, which too can be altered or amplified. Imitation is the use of either metaphrase or paraphrase but the translator has the liberty to choose which is appropriate and how the message will be conveyed.

Leaving the reader in peace

In 1813, during his “Über die Verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens” lecture,

Friedrich Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional P ...

proposed the idea where “ ther the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and he moves the author towards him”.

Dynamic equivalence

In 1964, Eugene Nida described translation as having two different types of equivalence:

formal and dynamic equivalence The terms dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, coined by Eugene Nida, are associated with two dissimilar translation approaches that are employed to achieve different levels of literalness between the source and target text, as evidenc ...

. Formal equivalence is when there is focus on the message itself (in both form and content); the message in the target language should match the message in the source language as closely as possible. In dynamic equivalence, there is less concern with matching the message in the target language with the message in the source language; the goal is to produce the same relationship between target text and target audience as there was with the original source text and its audience.

Communicative translation

In 1981,

Peter Newmark Peter Newmark (12 April 1916 – 9 July 2011) was an English professor of translation at the University of Surrey. Biography Newmark was born on 12 April 1916 in Brno in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic. He was o ...

referred to translation as either semantic (word-for-word) or communicative (sense-for-sense). He stated that semantic translation is one that is source language bias,

literal Literal may refer to: * Interpretation of legal concepts: ** Strict constructionism ** The plain meaning rule (a.k.a. "literal rule") * Literal (mathematical logic), certain logical roles taken by propositions * Literal (computer programmin ...

and faithful to the source text and communicative translation is target language bias, free and idiomatic. A semantic translation's goal is to stay as close as possible to the semantic and

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

structures of the source language, allowing the exact contextual meaning of the original. A communicative translation's goal is to produce an effect on the readers as close as possible to that as produced upon the readers of the original.

Idiomatic translation

In addition to these concepts, in 1990, Brian Mossop presented his concept of idiomatic and unidiomatic translation. Idiomatic translation is when the message of the source text is conveyed the way a target language writer would convey it, rather than staying to the way in which it was conveyed in the source text. Unidiomatic translation is innovative and translates individual words.

Domesticated translation

In 1994, also in modern translation studies,

Lawrence Venuti Lawrence Venuti (born 1953) is an American translation theorist, translation historian, and a translator from Italian language, Italian, French language, French, and Catalan language, Catalan. Career Born in Philadelphia, Venuti graduated from Te ...

introduced the concepts of domestication and foreignization, which are based on concepts from Friedrich Schleiermacher's 1813 lecture.Gambier, ''Handbook of Translation Studies'', 40. Domestication is the adaption of culture-specific terms or cultural context, where as foreignization is the preservation of the original cultural context of the source text (in terms of settings, names, etc.). Venuti also described domestication as being fluent and transparent strategies that result in acculturation, where “a cultural other is domesticated, made intelligible”. Schleiermacher's distinction between "bringing the author to the reader" (domestication) and "taking the reader to the author"Douglas Robinson, ed. ''Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche''. (Manchester: St. Jerome., 2002) (foreignization), dealt with a social concern and Venuti's distinction between domestication and foreignization deals with ethical principles.