Translation is the action of interpretation of the meaning of a ****, and subsequent production of an equivalent ****, also called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language. The **** to be translated is called the "source ****," and the language it is to be translated into is called the "target language"; the final product is sometimes called the "target ****."

Translation must take into account constraints that include con****, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms. A common misconception is that there exists a simple "word-for-word" correspondence between any two languages, and that translation is a straightforward mechanical process. A word-for-word translation does not take into account con****, grammar, conventions, and idioms.

Translation is fraught with the potential for "spilling over" of idioms and usages from one language into the other, since both languages repose within the single brain of the translator. Such spilling-over easily produces linguistic hybrids such as "Franglais" (French-English), "Spanglish" (Spanish-English), "Poglish" (Polish-English) and "Portuñol" (Portuguese-Spanish).

The art of translation is as old as written literature. Parts of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest known literary works, have been found in translations into several Asiatic languages of the second millennium BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read, in their own languages, by early authors of the Bible and of the Iliad.[1]

With the advent of computers, attempts have been made to computerize or otherwise automate the translation of natural-language ****s (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).