Specialist and literary translation

Science and technology keep producing new terms faster than dictionaries; translators coin, borrow or transliterate. The language must be direct, precise, standardised and impersonal — no rhyme, no shift of meaning.

Medical translation (dosage, storage, side effects, warnings) must meet local and international rules, because a poor translation can endanger health. Academic translation needs subject knowledge — Ibn Battuta's Arabic account of the Indian postal system (horse post 'uluq', foot post 'dawa') reaches us through translation.

Legal words have exact senses: 'assignment' is a classroom task but, in law, a transfer of ownership (as of copyright). Article 24 of the Constitution, banning child labour in factories and mines below fourteen, is an example of exact English-Hindi translation.

Machine translation, with bilingual dictionaries, thesauri and translation-memory software, can handle huge volumes, but it cannot replace human judgement.

Literary translation carries the flavour, tone, mood and thought pattern, not only the content; it gives nearly the joy of original writing. Kamleshwar's 'Kitne Pakistan' becomes 'Partitions' (Ameena Kazi Ansari). Ayappa Panikkar urged total 'interiorisation' of the original; a translator who grasps only the shell, not the kernel, produces a literal version.