Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A translator named on a book's title page as 'translated by X' with full credit on the cover
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Google Translate used to translate a single quote is AI translation, not a translator contribution
Editorial commentary
Translator contribution is the intellectual work of converting a scholarly text from one natural language into another while preserving meaning, register, disciplinary terminology, and argumentative structure — a task requiring the translator’s own scholarly judgement, not mechanical substitution. For book-length or standalone translations, the translator is typically credited on the title page, and may be listed as a co-author where the translation itself is the scholarly output.
How it differs from related terms: Translation work is the resulting output — the published translated text treated as a distinct, citable research product — while translator contribution is the credit given to the person who performed it; the two are usually discussed together but answer different questions. Neither applies to AI translation, where a machine-translation tool renders text without the scholarly judgement a human translator supplies, and which is disclosed as tool use rather than credited as authorship.
For short translated passages embedded within an otherwise original work, such as a quoted primary source, a named acknowledgement is the standard convention rather than co-authorship.
References
- ISO 17100:2015, Translation services
- American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) best practices
Also known as
Translation credit · Translator credit
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Translator contribution"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translator-contribution" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translator-contribution",
"name": "Translator contribution",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translator-contribution",
"description": "The intellectual work of converting a scholarly work from one natural language to another while preserving meaning, register, and technical accuracy, including the translator's own scholarly judgement on terminology, idiom, and disciplinary convention.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translator-contribution",
"sameAs": [
"Translation credit",
"Translator credit"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T01:58:35",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:04:40",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
