translation

translation, version, paraphrase, metaphrase can all denote a restating in intelligible language of the meaning or sense of a passage or work or the passage or work that is the product of such a restatement.

Translation implies a turning from one language into another

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English translations of the Bible

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a literal translation

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translation is an art that involves the re-creation of a work in another language, for readers with a different background— Malcolm Cowley

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Version (see also ACCOUNT 2) may be used in place of translation especially to imply a rendering that adheres rather to the spirit than to a literal translating of the original

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the year 1632 saw a complete version of the Aeneid by Vicars— Conington

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but often it is used to denote one of the translations of a given work, and especially of the Bible

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the Authorized or King James Version

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the Douay Version is used by English-speaking Roman Catholics

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Paraphrase may apply to a very free translation the purpose of which is to present the meaning rather than the phrasing of a passage or work

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a translation must be a paraphrase to be readable— FitzGerald

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It may apply also to an imitation with enough changes to obscure its indebtedness to an original in another tongue

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[Latin] plays which were not paraphrases from the Greek— Buchan

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Commonly, however, the term denotes a free, amplified, and often, interpretative rendering of the sense of a difficult passage in the same language

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write a paraphrase of Milton's Lycidas

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paraphrases of the Psalms in the Authorized Version

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Metaphrase is occasionally used by learned writers to denote a translation that is almost slavishly faithful to the original (what is often called a literal translation) to distinguish it from a paraphrase or free translation

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the way I have taken [in a translation of the Aeneid] is not so straight as metaphrase, nor so loose as paraphrase— Dryden

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