Sense-for-sense translation is the oldest

norm Norm, the Norm or NORM may refer to: In academic disciplines * Normativity, phenomenon of designating things as good or bad * Norm (geology), an estimate of the idealised mineral content of a rock * Norm (philosophy), a standard in normative e ...

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 the translation of a text done by translating each word separately without analysing how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In translation theory, anoth ...

History

Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...

, a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

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 deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

, 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 species; as well as the ...

coined the term "sense-for-sense" when he developed this translation method when was tasked by

Pope Damasus Pope Damasus is the name of two Popes of the Roman Catholic Church: * Pope Damasus I (saint; 330–384) * Pope Damasus II Pope Damasus II (; died 9 August 1048, born Poppo von Brixen) was the Bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 17 ...

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 often feature a compilation or discussion of beliefs, ritual practices, moral commandments and ...

, 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 (constituenc ...

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, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

in '' De optimo genere oratorum'' ("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 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 Cicero as well, or possibly from

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

, 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 simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...

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 Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most ...

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 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 Denh ...

in 1656 and André Lefevere 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 of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration (En ...

’s 1680 preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles, he proposed dividing translation into three parts called: metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation.

Metaphrase Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line" translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manu ...

is word-for-word and line by line translation from one language into another.

Paraphrase A paraphrase () or rephrase is the rendering of the same text in different words without losing the meaning of the text itself. More often than not, a paraphrased text can convey its meaning better than the original words. In other words, it is a ...

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 Church, Reformed theology, theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Age o ...

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 Eugene Albert Nida (November 11, 1914August 25, 2011) was an American linguist who developed the dynamic equivalence theory of Bible translation and is considered one of the founders of modern translation studies. Life Nida was born in Oklah ...

described translation as having two different types of equivalence: formal and dynamic equivalence. 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 The target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to the previously intended audience. In marketing and advertising, the target audience is a particular group of cons ...

as there was with the original

source text A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language. More generally, source material or symbolic sources are ob ...

and its audience.

Communicative translation

In 1981, Peter Newmark 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 and faithful to the source text and communicative translation is target language bias, free and

idiomatic An idiom (the quality of it being known as idiomaticness or idiomaticity) is a syntactical, grammatical, or phonological structure peculiar to a language that is actually realized, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have ...

. 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 Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the vari ...

Lawrence Venuti Lawrence Venuti (born 1953) is an American translation theorist, translation historian, and a translator from Italian, French, and Catalan. Career Born in Philadelphia, Venuti graduated from Temple University. In 1980 he completed a Ph.D. ...

introduced the concepts of

domestication and foreignization Domestication and foreignization are strategies in translation, regarding the degree to which translators make a text conform to the target culture (the culture corresponding to the language in which the translation is made). Domestication is th ...

, 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 Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

principles.