ABSTRACT
This chapter defines, that translation as part of the discipline of Applied Linguistics, and go on to explain why translation is more important today than ever before. Translation has been an important cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practice since earliest times. it can be seen as the replacement of something else, something that pre-existed, ideas and expressions represented at second hand, as it were. The chapter also deals with translation, a few words about the differences between these two modes of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication may be warranted here. The link between functional equivalence and intercultural understanding is highlighted when we consider the concept of the 'dilated speech situation'. This is why the chapter takes translation as cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication, where the two cannot, and should not, be separated and it concentrates on mentioning several definitions which focus on the linguistic-textual aspect of translation as it is the one it consider most basic.
