Document Translation Glossary

Formatted documents - Document with graphs, pictures, diagrams, tables or other elements.

Freelancer - Translator who works on a project-by-project basis for translation agencies or clients directly.

Free translation - Translations in which more attention is given to the overall meaning than to isolated words (see also Literal Translation).

Language pair - Pair of source and target languages, i.e. the two languages the document must be translated from and to (e.g., from English to Spanish).

Literal translation - Translations in which more attention is given to the individual words (rather than the overall meaning). One must be very careful with this kind of translation as it is only suitable in certain situations.

Source language - The original language of the document.

Target language - The language into which document is supposed to be translated.

Translation agency - Translation organisation who works only with freelancers.

Translation companies - Translation organisations that employ full-time translators who often specialise on certain sectors/topics or document types.

Unformatted documents - Documents without elements such as tables, graphs and pictures.