There are many things people to use describe translations: literal, formal, functional, dynamic, idiomatic, figurative, literary, interpretative, accurate, thought-for-though, word-for-word, relevant, paraphrase.
Most of these suck. Most of them are almost entirely useless in my opinion. They get so misused and everyone uses them in their own subtly different way.
Instead I think it’s much better to ask what a translation is attempting to convey from its source. It might try to convey the meaning (semantics) of the source. It might try to convey the purpose of the author (pragmatics, broadly.)
When people talk about a literal, formal, non-interpretative or word-for-word translation, they usually mean that it attempts to convey the morphology and syntax of the source into the target language. So my question to BBB’s readers is: is there any value in conveying morphosyntax? If you believe there is, put your best case forward and convince me!
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