Etymology

translate

trans·late
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Today it means: To change spoken words or written text (of a book, document, movie, etc.) from one language to another. Full definition →

Middle English translaten ← Anglo-Norman translater ← Latin trānslātus
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The story

  1. Latin · derived fromtrānslātus
  2. Anglo-Norman · derived fromtranslater
  3. Middle English · inherited fromtranslaten“to transport, translate, transform”
  4. English todaytranslate

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 (verb-forming suffix). Distant doublet of transfer, see collate and confer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others. In this sense, displaced Old English wendan (“to translate,” also the word for “to turn” and “to change”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.