translate
Verbtranslates, translating, translated
Noun pluraltranslates
Formstranslates, translating, translated
Pluraltranslates
- 1To render spoken words or written text from one language into another.
The committee asked her to translate the speech into three languages.
Scholars translated the ancient manuscript into modern English over many years.
Note
The Latin behind the word is literal: trānslātus, from trānsferō, "to carry across." To translate a text is to carry its meaning over into another language. The Middle English verb already meant to transport, to translate and to transform, and those three ideas still organize the word's meanings. The target language follows into: Hans translated my novel into Welsh.
- 2To work at rendering words from one language into another, or to be capable of being rendered in another language.
He translates between Spanish and English for the courts.
Some jokes simply do not translate across cultures.
Similarinterpret
Note
Two quite different subjects stand before the intransitive verb. A person translates for someone, interpreting on the spot. A word translates as its equivalent ("dog" translates as "chien"). An idiom or joke simply does or doesn't translate, which tests whether its meaning survives the crossing. Neither use needs an object, unlike the ordinary transitive verb.
- 3To express spoken words or written text in a different, often clearer or simpler, way within the same language.
She translated the doctor's technical advice into everyday terms for her grandmother.
Good editors translate dense academic prose into something general readers enjoy.
Similarparaphrase, rephrase, simplify, reword, decode
- 4To render something in a different form or medium.
The designer translated the client's vision into a working prototype.
Great coaches translate raw talent into disciplined performance.
Similarconvert, turn, transform, render, adapt
Note
Shakespeare already stretches the verb beyond language in As You Like It, where a duke can "translate the stubbornness of fortune / Into so quiet and so sweet a style." The pattern is translate something into or to something else: experiences to film, the sonic power of spirituals into accessible forms. The medium changes, and the substance is meant to survive the change.
- 5To pass, or be able to pass, into another form or medium, as when effort turns into concrete results.
Talent alone rarely translates into a lasting career.
These savings will translate into lower prices for customers.
Note
The intransitive partner of the transitive "change form" sense usually travels with an adverb: something translates well, or poorly, into something else. Excellent writing may not translate well into film. Sales experience can translate well into fund-raising. With only into and no adverb, it names a result: savings translate into lower prices.
- 6To assemble amino acids into a chain in the order dictated by the codons of an mRNA molecule.
Ribosomes translate messenger RNA into a sequence of amino acids.
Once the gene was transcribed, the cell translated the transcript into protein.
Note
Geneticists borrowed the image of turning one language into another. A message written in three-base codons is read off messenger RNA and rendered as a chain of amino acids. The mRNA is the object, often in the passive (mRNAs are translated). The noun translation and the adjective translational name the process and the machinery that performs it.
- 7To rearrange a song or musical piece from one genre into another.
The producer translated the orchestral score into an electronic dance track.
Skilled arrangers can translate a pop hit into a jazz standard.
Similaradapt, rearrange, arrange, rework
Note
A musician's narrowing of the idea of changing form: the thing moved is a song, and its destination is a genre. The new style follows into, as in Jayson Beaster-Jones's film songs "translated into conventional terms used in Western music." The arranger reworks harmony, rhythm and instrumentation so the piece sounds native to its new style.
- 8A set of points formed by adding a fixed vector to every point of another set.
Like a chess piece moved several squares in a straight line, arriving unchanged but elsewhere.
The translate of the region sits ten units to the right of the original.
Two translates of the same disk may overlap or stay completely apart.
Note
The noun names the result of translating a figure: the set you get when one fixed vector is added to every point. It is countable, with the plural translates, as in orthogonal arrays "or their translates." In H. H. Schaefer's definition, an affine subspace is exactly a translate of a linear subspace: a flat that need not pass through the origin.
- 9To transform a geometric figure or space by moving every point the same distance in a given direction.
To translate the polygon, shift each vertex five units upward.
After translating this plane, parallel to the ground line, to the position n#95;1L#95;1r#95;1, these points appear at n#95;1 and r#95;1.
1868, S[amuel] Edward Warren, “Removal of Practical Difficulties Arising from the Confusion of Projections and Perspectives”Note
A mathematician's word for a slide. Every point moves the same distance in the same direction, so the figure keeps its size, shape and orientation, with no rotation, reflection or scaling. The moved figure is called a translate of the original. In 1868 Samuel Edward Warren translates a whole plane parallel to the ground line.
- 10To move a coordinate system’s origin to a different point without changing the direction of any axis.
To translate the axes, move the origin to a new point while keeping each axis parallel.
It is convenient at this point to translate the axis of the n dimensional space so that the origin of each axis occurs at its arithmetical mean.
1957, Leo Marcus, “A Mathematical Tool in Industry: An Algorithm for Curve Fitting by the Method of Least Squares”Note
Here the frame moves instead of the figure. Translating the axes shifts the origin to a new point while each axis stays parallel to its old position, so every coordinate changes by a fixed amount. In 1957 Leo Marcus translates the axes so that each origin sits at its arithmetical mean, which makes curve fitting convenient. Compare moving the figure itself.
- 11To transfer something to a different place or position.
The household translated the great oak cabinet from the old hall to the new manor.
To find one's self suddenly translated from the wild, flowery prairie into the heart of an aged, moss-grown village, of such foreign aspect, withal, was by no means easy to reconcile with one's notions of reality.
1838, [Edmund Flagg], The Far WestNote
The plainest image in the word, closest to the Latin "carry across" behind the language sense. The royal Injunctions of 1559 curse whoever "translateth the bounds" of a neighbor's land. Matthew Poole in 1696 has David translate a fault "upon his Evil Ministers." Edmund Flagg in 1838 is suddenly translated from prairie into village. Today it reads as archaic, and move or transfer is the safe choice.
- 12To impart purely linear motion to a body, so that it moves without rotating.
Like an elevator car rising: every part moves together, and none of it twists.
The machine translates each panel across the floor without rotating it.
We translate the sample horizontally to test its alignment.
Note
Physics uses the word for motion without turning: every point of the body shifts by the same displacement. Its natural contrast is rotation. In 2004 Stephen Webb translates a closed container of pool balls through space to show that the physics inside is unchanged. That is the idea of symmetry under translation.
- 13Of a body, to undergo linear motion without any rotation.
Like a train gliding along a straight track, every car shifting the same distance.
The piston translates along the cylinder without any twist.
Let us assume the gas molecule to be a structureless "billiard ball," translating in space and frequently colliding with the neighboring molecules.
2015, Ethirajan Rathakrishnan, “High-temperature Flows”Note
The motion of translating a body, now with the body as subject. A gas molecule, modeled as a billiard ball, goes "translating in space" between collisions. The noun shows the pairing physicists rely on. Howard Brody notes that a ball striking a racket at its center of mass produces "pure translation" and no rotation of the racket.
- 14To transfer the remains of a deceased monarch or other notable person to another place, or to move a holy relic from one shrine to another.
The bishop translated the martyr's relics to the cathedral's new altar.
Not far from hence is the Church and Convent of the Dominicans, where in the Chapel of St. Catherine of Sienna, they shew her head, the rest of her body being translated to Rome.
1644, John Evelyn, “[Diary entry for 25 October 1644]”Note
A ceremonial removal rather than a simple relocation: what is carried is a notable person's body or a holy relic, and its new home is a church or shrine. John Evelyn, visiting the Dominicans in 1644, was shown St. Catherine of Siena's head, "the rest of her body being translated to Rome." The word belongs to church history and sounds archaic elsewhere.
- 15To transfer a bishop or other member of the clergy from one ecclesiastical post to another.
The synod translated the archbishop to the see of York.
Authorities may translate a deacon to a distant parish for administrative reasons.
Note
Church governance has its own kind of transfer: a bishop is translated from one see to another. William Camden tells of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. When Henry VII would have translated him to a better bishopric, Fisher refused, saying he would not forsake "his poor little old wife," meaning his diocese. Outside ecclesiastical history the usage is archaic.
- 16Of a saint or holy person, to be taken up into Heaven without bodily death; also figuratively, to die and pass to Heaven.
Scripture tells how God translated Enoch so that he did not see death.
By faith Enoch was tranſlated, that he ſhould not ſee death; and was not found, becauſe God had tranſlated him: For before his tranſlation he had this teſtimonie, that he pleaſed God.
1611, The Holy Bible, King James VersionNote
Here the move is from earth to Heaven. The King James Bible of 1611 says Enoch "was translated, that he should not see death." That is the strict meaning: taken up alive. In 1654 Samuel Clarke uses the word more gently, as a euphemism for a good death, with God "translating him out of this vale of tears." Both uses belong to devotional English and now read as archaic.
- 17To cause a disease, or something producing it, to move from one part of the body to another, or rarely between persons.
Physicians of the age claimed a poultice could translate the infection to a less vital region.
The remedy was said to translate the gout from the foot to the hand.
Note
Older medicine pictured disease as something that could be relocated within the body. Chambers's Information for the People (1857) reports John Mackintosh's view of skin eruptions, erysipelas among them, as natural blisters. Through them the constitution could "translate disease from the internal organs to the skin." The construction runs from one part to another, and the usage is obsolete.
- 18To place someone in a trance; to cause a person to lose their senses or recollection.
Note
An obsolete figurative use in which the person is carried out of themselves: dazed, entranced, unable to recall or speak. It sits close to entrance, "to place in a trance." A modern reader would almost certainly mistake it for one of the word's other meanings. Recognize it when reading older texts, but don't use it in your own writing.
- 19To repair used shoes, boots, or other clothing so that they can be sold again.
The back-street cobbler translated tattered boots for resale to laborers.
Dealers would translate secondhand shoes and pass them off as nearly new.
Note
This is shop talk from the secondhand boot trade, and it fits the word's Latin core, "carried across": a worn boot passes from discard back to something saleable. Henry Mayhew, in 1851, marks off both "translated" and its agent noun "translators" as trade terms. He ranks translators with slop-shops and secondhand dealers and notes great quantities of boots sent to Ireland for the work. The word is obsolete now, so keep it to historical writing and flag it, as Mayhew did.
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Origin
From Middle English translaten ('to transport, translate, transform'), via Anglo-Norman translater, from Latin trānslātus, the perfect passive participle of trānsferō ('to transport, carry across, translate'). It is a distant doublet of transfer, and in this sense it displaced Old English wendan ('to translate,' also 'to turn' or 'to change').