Litteraali

Litteraali is a term used in linguistics and translation studies to describe a literal rendering of a text from one language into another. The label refers to a word-for-word approach that prioritizes lexical fidelity and grammatical form over idiomatic naturalness or pragmatic meaning. The word is derived from the Latin litteralis, meaning pertaining to letters, and is used in several languages to indicate a close textual replication rather than a fluent target-language rendering.

In practice, a litteraali translation aims to reproduce the source text’s vocabulary, syntax, and order as closely as possible. This can be useful for linguistic analysis, philology, or the study of structure and meaning in a text. However, the approach often results in awkward or misleading results when idioms, cultural references, or context do not map cleanly across languages. For example, idiomatic phrases or culturally bound expressions may be rendered literally, which can obscure the intended sense for readers in the target language. Because of these limitations, litteraali translation is typically contrasted with more dynamic or functional translation strategies that seek to preserve meaning and effect in the target language.

Related concepts include calques, which are word-for-word loans from one language into another, and dynamic equivalence, which prioritizes conveying the original message and effect over exact wording. Litteraali also appears in discussions of machine translation as a baseline or intermediate stage in evaluating output quality.

See also: translation studies, calque, dynamic equivalence, idiom, machine translation.