What does the term "Adaptation" mean in translation?

Adaptation may be understood as a set of translative operations which result in a text that is not accepted as a translation but is nevertheless recognized as representing a source text of about the same length. As such, the term may embrace numerous vague notions such as imitation, rewriting, and so on. Strictly speaking, the concept of adaptation requires recognition of translation as non-adaptation, as a somehow more constrained mode of transfer. For this reason, the history of adaptation is parasitic on historical concepts of translation.

The initial divide between adaptation and translation might be dated from CICERO and Horace, both of whom referred to the interpres (translator) as work­ing word-for-word and distinguished this method from what they saw as freer but ent­irely legitimate results of transfer operations. The different interpretations given to the Horatian verse, Nee verbum verbo eurabis reddere fidus interpres (' and you will not render word-for-word [like a] faithful transla­tor') - irrespective of whether they were for or against the word-for-word precept - effec­tively reproduced the logic by which adaptations could be recognized.

The golden age of adaptation was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the epoch of the belles infideles, which started in France and then spread to the rest of the world . The very free trans­lations carried out during this period were justified in terms of the need for foreign texts to be adapted to the tastes and habits of the target culture, regardless of the damage done to the original. The nineteenth century wit­nessed a reaction to this 'infidelity', but adaptations con­tinued to predominate in the theatre. In the twentieth century, the proliferation of techni­cal, scientific and commercial documents has given rise to a preference for transparency in translation, with an emphasis on efficient communication; this could be seen as licensing a form of adaptation which involves rewriting a text for a new readership.

Generally speaking, historians and scholars of translation take a negative view of adapta­tion, dismissing the phenomenon as distortion, falsification or censorship, but it is rare to find clear definitions of the terminology used in discussing this controversial concept.

Acclimation with any circumstances or environment

Getting accustomes to some conditions

the state of being adapted; adjustment