Sense-for-sense translation

Sense-for-sense translation is the oldest norm for translating. It fundamentally means translating the meaning of each whole sentence before moving on to the next, and stands in normative opposition to word-for-word translation (also known as literal translation), which means translating the meaning of each lexical item in sequence.

The coiner of the term "sense-for-sense" was Jerome in his "Letter to Pammachius", where he said that, "except of course in the case of Holy Scripture, where even the syntax contains a mystery," he translates non verbum e verbo sed sensum de sensu: not word for word but sense for sense.

However, arguably Jerome is here not inventing the concept of sense-for-sense translation, which most scholars believe was invented by Cicero in De optimo genere oratorum ("The Best Kind of Orator"), when he said that in translating from Greek to Latin "I did not think I ought to count them out to the reader like coins, but to pay them by weight, as it were."

And he is certainly not even coining the term "word-for-word," but borrowing it from Cicero as well, or possibly from Horace, who warned the writer interested in retelling ancient tales in an original way Nec verbo verbum curabit reddere / fidus interpretes: "not to try to render them word for word [like some] faithful translator."

Some have read that passage in Horace differently:

In John Dryden’s 1680 preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles, he proposed dividing translation into three parts called: metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation.Metaphrase is word-for-word and line by line translation from one language into another.Paraphrase is sense-for-sense translation where the message of the author is kept but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense, which too can be altered or amplified.Imitation is the use of either metaphrase or paraphrase but the translator has the liberty to choose which is appropriate and how the message will be conveyed.

In 1813, during his “Über die Verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens” lecture,Friedrich Schleiermacher proposed the idea where “[E]ither the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and he moves the author towards him”.

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