undertranslate
undertranslate verb: to translate (language) in insufficient detail, or failing to translate certain elements.
Verb
undertranslate (third-person singular simple present undertranslates, present participle undertranslating, simple past and past participle undertranslated)
- To translate (language) in insufficient detail, or failing to translate certain elements.
- Secondly, there is a tendency to undertranslate, viz. to normalise by generalising, to understate, in all translation but particularly in literary translation.1991, Peter Newmark, About Translation, Multilingual Matters, →ISBN, page 104
- Only Borell and Adam undertranslate this opener as "What brings you here, Adler?"2017, Geraldine Brodie, Adapting Translation for the Stage, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 45
Forms of undertranslate
| third-person singular present | undertranslates |
|---|---|
| present participle | undertranslating |
| past participle | undertranslated |
| past | undertranslated |
Origin of undertranslate
From under- + translate.
Questions about undertranslate
- What does undertranslate mean?
- Undertranslate means to translate (language) in insufficient detail, or failing to translate certain elements.
- What part of speech is undertranslate?
- Undertranslate is a verb.
- What is the past tense of undertranslate?
- The past tense of undertranslate is undertranslated.
Words near undertranslate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: undertranslate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-undertranslate.wav.
Cite this entry: “undertranslate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/undertranslate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.