Cambridge Dictionary defines translation as “to change words into a different language.” The process involves decoding the material of the source text and re-encoding it into another language. Both texts communicate the same message. For an accurate translation, the translator must have a comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter.

The act of translation appears to be a straightforward procedure, but in actuality, it requires a lot of work. Word-for-word translations often do not make sense. For example, an English version of a menu in a French restaurant would not translate "pâté de foie gras" as "fat liver paste." The question for the translator is "how would it have been said, had it been said originally in ‘x’ language?” The translator must decipher the essence of a text; to do this, he or she has to first identify its real meaning, which may be contained in a word, phrase, or a couple of sentences.

The translator must ascertain that the source text and the target text both contain the same message. Before attempting to rewrite the text in a different language, it is important to meticulously analyze all the features of the source text, which necessitates a thorough knowledge of grammar, semantics, syntax, and idioms. Some common translation problems include misspelled text, factual errors in the source text, vernacular terms, baffling acronyms and ellipsis, ambiguous terminology, and specific cultural references.

Machine translation is gaining widespread popularity. In this form of translation, a computer program analyzes the source text and produces a target text in another language, without any human intervention. In text with simple sentence structure, for example a restaurant menu, machine translation can deliver functional results. In other fields, post-editing is required; to determine the accuracy of the results, most machine translations require human intervention.