1.1 The Source and The Target

Translation is a task that can be performed in several different contexts: translation can exist within one language, between two languages, or even in the verbalization of signs. For the purposes of this course we will be studying interlingual translation, or translation between two languages. In order to distinguish between the two languages, it is useful to refer to them differently. We can refer to the language of the original text which needs translating as the Source Language (SL), and the language into which we are translating as the Target Language (TL). This extends to the products that we are working with, as the original text is referred to as the Source Text (ST), and the translated version of it, the Target Text (TT). We will use the abbreviations for these terms throughout the course material for the sake of simplicity. With these terms in mind, we could say that on a very basic level, the translation process involves two activities: understanding the ST and formulating a TT. Virtually all of the examples we will examine and the translations we will complete for practice will use Spanish as the SL and English as the TL. 

Figure 1.1 - The Translation process