Sense-for-sense translation

Jerome, a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and historian coined the term "sense-for-sense" when he developed this translation method when was tasked by Pope Damasus to review the existing translations of the Gospel and produce a more reliable Latin version.

[2] He adopted a framework that corrected the mistakes of previous translators as well as the alterations of critical scholars and the errors made by careless copyists[3] by collecting the oldest Greek manuscripts, which he compared with the Old Latin versions, and translated the scripture into a version that is close as possible to the original meaning.

"[4] Cicero did not mention sense-for-sense in his works but it is considered to be a type of "segmental" theory, which is attributed to him and Horace.

It has possibly also been borrowed from Cicero as well, or possibly from Horace, who warned the writer interested in retelling ancient tales in an original way Nec verbo verbum curabit reddere / fidus interpretes: "not to try to render them word for word [like some] faithful translator.

Boethius in 510 CE and Johannes Scotus Eriugena in the mid-9th century read it to mean that translating literally is "the fault/blame of the faithful interpreter/translator," and fear that they have incurred it.

[9] Paraphrase is sense-for-sense translation where the message of the author is kept but the words are not so strictly followed as the sense, which too can be altered or amplified.

[11] In 1813, during his “Über die Verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens” lecture,[12] Friedrich Schleiermacher proposed the idea where “[E]ither the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and he moves the author towards him”.