Other forms: translated, translates, translating
To translate is to turn words from one language into another. Translate from French, translated into forty languages, hard to translate.
The prepositions are from and into. Interpreting is the spoken equivalent and is a different skill. Something that does not translate has no equivalent in the other language, which is a real limit rather than a failure of effort. Figuratively, to translate means to convert into another form: translate the idea into practice, translate into results. Note translation, translator, and lost in translation.
1verbtranslateTo turn words from one language into another.
“Could you translate this letter from Spanish into English for me?”
2verbconvertTo convert into another form or result.
“None of it translated into anything anybody could use.”
translate is a carrying across.
Latin translatus means carried across — trans-, across, plus the past participle of ferre, to carry. Translating is bearing meaning from one language to another, and metaphor is the same idea in Greek.
Proto-Indo-European
*telh₂- (bear)
Latin
trānslātus
Anglo-Norman
translater
Middle English
translaten — to transport, translate, transform
English, today
translate
Built from
From Middle English translaten (“to transport, translate, transform”), from Anglo-Norman translater, from Latin trānslātus, perfect passive participle of trānsferō (“to transport, carry across, translate”). See also -ate. Distant a doublet of transfer, see collate and confer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others. In this sense, displaced wendan (“to translate,” also the word for “to turn” and “to change”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA