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Descriptive Essay : From The Italian Essay

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Taduttore Traditore

Throughout the years, a lot of metaphors have been used to describe the work of translation. In this essay, the focus will be on the metaphor “Taduttore Traditore” (from the Italian: to translate is to betray).
According to the Bible, before the Tower of Babel, everyone spoke one language. Yet because mankind decided to build a tower that would reach the Heavens, God punished his people by making them speak different languages and by splitting them into different parts of the world. That is when translation begins.
At that time, there was obviously no internet, no computers, no automatic translations nor even bilingual dictionaries. Nowadays, with the growth of the technologies, access to nearly every kind of information is possible. The translator’s task is facilitated thanks to the many tools that the new technologies can provide such as MA Tools like Linguee, Reverso, Word Reference, Bab.la and many more. Although they are not one hundred percent accurate, they are a great assistance for a translator, especially for a word by word translation. Translated expressions or sentences are still hard to deal with for a computer programme, as performant as it may be.
In the old days, people only had paper and ink. They depended on their knowledge and skills and not on computer or dictionary memories. That is why it is often said that translation is a betrayal, because people translated what they thought was right and truthful and the readers from the target

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