Translator

How to spell translator

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce translator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does translator mean?

1. nounA person who converts written or spoken words from one language into another.
2. nounA device or piece of software that converts text or speech from one language into another.

Translator in a sentence

• The conference hired a professional translator for the visiting delegates.

• He held his phone up and let the translator render the menu into English.

• As a freelance translator, she works mainly with legal and medical documents.

• The pocket translator struggled with the regional dialect.

Where does translator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin translator, meaning 'one who transfers or carries across', which was built from the verb transferre. That verb combined trans, meaning 'across', with ferre, meaning 'to carry', so the literal idea was of carrying something over from one place to another. Because the past participle of ferre was latus, the noun took the form translator rather than 'transferor', and that buried 'lat' is why the spelling has no 'f' that you might expect from 'transfer'. English adopted the word in the late medieval period, mostly by way of Old French translateur, to describe a person who carries meaning across from one language into another. The same trans- plus ferre family gives us 'transfer', 'translate', and 'transfusion', all sharing that core sense of moving something from here to there.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• lat (carried, from latus, the past participle of ferre 'to carry')
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)