A scholarly publication that renders a previously-published work from one natural language into another, with the translator(s) credited and the original work referenced, treated as a distinct research output for purposes of credit, citation, and intellectual contribution.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A scholarly English translation of a 16th-century Latin medical text, published with critical apparatus and translator credit on the title page

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A Google Translate output of a paragraph is not a translation work in the scholarly-output sense

Editorial commentary

Particularly important in humanities, history of science, religious studies, and language scholarship. Translation-as-output recognises the translator’s intellectual contribution and gives a citable record for the translated version. Distinct from AI-only machine translation which is typically not classed as a creditable scholarly output.

References

ISO 17100:2015 Translation services
MLA Translation Studies guidelines

Also known as

Scholarly translation · Translation publication

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Translation (work)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translation-work" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translation-work",
  "name": "Translation (work)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translation-work",
  "description": "A scholarly publication that renders a previously-published work from one natural language into another, with the translator(s) credited and the original work referenced, treated as a distinct research output for purposes of credit, citation, and intellectual contribution.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/translation-work",
  "sameAs": [
    "Scholarly translation",
    "Translation publication"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:07:34",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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