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Translation: possible or impossible?

I would like to start with a question: When did people start to translate? We know that the first form of language was the spoken form, so maybe it's better to ask: When did people start to interpret? The answer is simple: they started doing it when two societies that were using different languages met for the first time. A long time ago.

Even though people have been interpreting for thousands of years, linguists ask all the time what translation actually is. So many questions without simple answers:
Is the translated text all the time the same text as before translation?
What is the position of translator?
How much can translator change in a text?
And many others.

One of  the problems here is that tranforming text into another language is extremely difficult because of the differences between languages.

Differences between languages might be less or more visible. When you compare Italian to Spanish, you may notice different pronounciation or idioms but it is nothing when comparing to differences between Spanish and... Japanese, for example. If you want to translate a text, you'll need to use different vocabulary, different grammatical structures. And it's not the biggest problem.

Language is always immersed in a certain context. And this is the most tricky area: translator needs to know to what extent he or she can infuence the text so that it stayed clear to the lecturer but also was the closest to the original. 

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