Translating: what changes and what stays

Ages 9 to 12 Read alone or together · about 30 minutes

Read together

Translating means saying the same meaning in another language. It is harder than swapping word for word.

Idioms show why. In English, “break a leg” means “good luck”. In Spanish, “meter la pata” (to put your paw in) means to make a mistake. In Filipino, “nagbibilang ng poste” (counting posts) means to be out of work.

A good translator asks: what does it mean, and how would a person here say it?

Do it

1. Take a short sentence in one language, such as “The cat sat on the warm roof.”
2. Translate it into another language you know, or ask a family member. Then translate it back. Did the meaning stay the same?
3. Find two idioms in different languages and write what each really means.
4. Talk about why Bible translators work carefully: they want the meaning to be clear in each language.

Talk about it

• What got lost in the translation?
• Why is it hard to translate a joke?

For the grown-up

Translation is a good way to value all of your family's languages. Scholars of translation, such as Eugene Nida, who worked on Bible translation, wrote about balancing the form and the meaning of a text. This site's Spanish and Filipino pages are written with AI assistance and not yet checked by native speakers, so they are a good place to practise noticing and fixing translation problems, and you are welcome to tell us what you find.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Mona Baker, In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018)
• Eugene A. Nida, Toward a Science of Translating (E. J. Brill, 1964)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.