36

Does one translate a word or phrase into another language or to another language? For example:

  • Translate the following phrase to Spanish.
  • Translate the following phrase into Spanish.
jrdioko
  • 1,041

4 Answers4

33

In my experience/dialect, you use translate into when you are talking about the target language, but you can optionally use translate to when you are talking about the target text (the specific equivalent for the piece of original text you're talking about).

For example, all of these are acceptable:

(1) I translated "I like cats" into Spanish.

(2) I translated "I like cats" into "Me gustan los gatos."

(3) I translated "I like cats" to "Me gustan los gatos."

Note that translate to is very commonly used intransitively, e.g.:

(4) "I like cats" translates to "Me gustan los gatos."

However, you can't use translate into intransitively, and you can't translate to a language as a whole. Thus, these are unacceptable:

(1a) *I translated "I like cats" to Spanish.

(4a) *"I like cats" translates into "Me gustan los gatos."

Community
  • 1
alcas
  • 4,902
12

As far as translation is concerned, you translate into another language. You don't translate to it.

Barrie England
  • 140,205
  • 1
    Do you have a cite? – James Waldby - jwpat7 Dec 09 '11 at 18:43
  • 2
    @jwpat7: Apart from my own experience and practice, the OED has five citations for ‘translate to’ and none of them concerns language. It has 42 for ‘translate into’ and almost all concern language. There may be rare instances where ‘translate to [language]’ are found, but if the OP is asking for straightforward advice, I believe I have given it. – Barrie England Dec 09 '11 at 18:51
  • @jwpat7: It's the general case. See this NGram for evidence that translate to is rarely used in any context. – FumbleFingers Dec 09 '11 at 18:51
  • The only context in which I've heard translate to is when the subject of the verb is also the thing that's being translated (e.g., X, which translates to Y, is...). –  Dec 09 '11 at 19:16
  • Is there any semantic difference between these two cases? – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Dec 09 '11 at 19:19
  • @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Apparently no semantic differences have been mentioned, and the arguments advanced so far against translate to equate to "We don't do that". Which is true, albeit not educational. – James Waldby - jwpat7 Dec 09 '11 at 20:52
  • @jwpat7: Lots of language is "we don't do that". But I was thinking about this a bit more and I think that there might be a general rule for transformations: "He was turned into a toad", "The robot transformed into a truck", "It was translated into Spanish", etc. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Dec 09 '11 at 20:57
  • @jwpat7: If the OP wants a treatise on the history and many and varied uses of 'translate' with and without different prepositions, then I'm sure, given time, energy and space, several of us could provide it. If, as I suspect, he wants a pragmatic answer to a straightforward question, then that answer is that 'translate into [language]' is a better bet than 'translate to [language]'. – Barrie England Dec 09 '11 at 21:03
  • @Mr. Shiny and New 安宇: Yes, 'into' tends, I would say, to be used where motion, actual or figurative, is of the essence of the preceding verb, particularly with the sense of passing through . – Barrie England Dec 09 '11 at 21:16
12

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the BBC English dictionary and the OED one translates into another language.

Translate to is used alongside translate into in a sentence like :

The rates translate to monthly payments of $399...

and translate to is used when translating something to something :

This book was translated to film....

But google gives hundreds of instances of use of "translate to" another language.

None
  • 4,216
-1

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/translate

use dictionary :)

1 CHANGE LANGUAGES [intransitive, transitive] to change written or spoken words into another language → interpret

translate something (from something) into something Translate the text from Italian into English. Poetry doesn’t usually translate well.

translate as Dagda, an ancient Irish deity, literally translates as ‘the good god’.

user238164
  • 1