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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. [1] In translation theory, another term for literal translation is metaphrase (as opposed to paraphrase for an analogous translation).
In some dialects of French, the English term "weekend" becomes la fin de semaine ("the end of week"), a calque, but in some it is left untranslated as le week-end, a loanword. French cor anglais (literally English horn) is a near-calque of English French horn. In English cor anglais refers to a completely different musical instrument.
Sense-for-sense translation is the oldest norm 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).
The first known use of the word literally was in the 15th century, [1] or the 1530s, [2] when it was used in the sense of "in a literal sense or manner". [1]The use of the word as an intensifier for figurative statements emerged later, in 1769, [3] [4] when Frances Brooke wrote the following sentence: [3]
Prima facie (/ ˌ p r aɪ m ə ˈ f eɪ ʃ i,-ʃ ə,-ʃ i iː /; from Latin prīmā faciē) is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight", [1] or "based on first impression". [2] The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of primus ("first") and facies ("face"), both in the ablative case ...
Some authors call this a morpheme-by-morpheme translation. [6] Some linguists refer to a phonological calque, in which the pronunciation of a word is imitated in the other language. [7] For example, the English word "radar" becomes the similar-sounding Chinese word 雷达 (pinyin: léidá), [7] which literally means "to arrive (as fast) as ...
Literal language is the usage of words exactly according to their direct, straightforward, or conventionally accepted meanings: their denotation. Figurative (or non-literal) language is the usage of words in a way that deviates from their conventionally accepted definitions in order to convey a more complex meaning or a heightened effect. [1]
For example, break a leg is an expression commonly said to wish a person good luck just prior to their giving a performance or presentation, which apparently wishes injury on them. However, the phrase likely comes from a loan translation from a phrase of German and Yiddish origin, which is why it makes no literal sense in English.