1. the act or process of rendering words, sentences, or texts into a different language or the written or spoken rendering so produced. The degree to which a good translation reproduces the form as well as the content of the original will depend on a range of factors, notably the compatibility of the source language and the target language, the nature of the original speech or text, and the purpose of the translation. See also interpret.

2. in genetics, the process whereby the genetic information contained in messenger RNA, in the form of a sequence of codons, is “translated” into a sequence of amino acids in protein synthesis. See genetic code.