The AOT has set translation standards it considers necessary for the translation to be a research work that surpasses the regular translation and its disadvantages and involves deploying a specialized scientific effort. Thus making the translated book apt to be “adopted” in scientific circles and making the AOT proud of its publication and of recommending it.

Among the most important standards set by the AOT:

• Mastering both source and target languages. Note that the AOT only translated the book from its original language
• Knowing the material sufficiently. In fact, the main difficulties occur from erroneously thinking that a “Translator” can translate in various fields unrelated to one another. The AOT insists that the Translation is not “general” but rather one that is precise on the level of every word and expression and insists one consistency in translating terms throughout the text. If the context imposes a different translation in Arabic of the same term, this translation should be justified in a footnote to avoid ambiguity.
• Readiness to add explanatory footnotes to some terms and concepts to help the Arab reader assimilate the translated text. Adding a lexicon and a glossary at the end.
• Accepting the concept of revision as being part of the translation task and it does not diminish the translator’s competence or his scientific position.
• The AOT also applies the international standards adopted by the IFT charter that could be consulted on their website: www.fit-ift.org

Interpretation, or interpreting, is an activity that consists of establishing, either simultaneously or consecutively, oral or gestural communications between two or more speakers who are not speaking (or signing) the same language.

Language intepretation may be roughly understood as the restating, in speech, language spoken (uttered out loud) in another language. Interpreters typically distinguish interpretation from translation, which deals with the written word. Interpretations are uttered; translations are written down.

Interpretation may be either consecutive or simultaneous. With consecutive interpretation, the speaker frequently pauses to allow the interpreter to translate what was just spoken. With simultaneous interpretation, the interpreter, using headphones to listen to the speaker, voices the translation into a microphone immediately.

Machine translation (MT) is a form of translation where a computer program analyses the text in one language — the "source text" — and then attempts to produce another, equivalent text in another language — the target text — without human intervention.

Currently the state of machine translation is such that it involves some human intervention, as it requires a pre-editing and a post-editing phase. Note that in machine translation, the translator supports the machine and not the other way around.

Nowadays most machine translation systems produce what is called a "gisting translation" — a rough translation that gives the "gist" of the source text, but is not otherwise usable.

However, in fields with highly limited ranges of vocabulary and simple sentence structure, for example weather reports, machine translation can deliver useful results.

"Machine translation (MT) is the application of computers to the task of translating texts from one natural language to another. One of the very earliest pursuits in computer science, MT has proved to be an elusive goal, but today a number of systems are available which produce output which, if not perfect, is of sufficient quality to be useful in a number of specific domains." Source: www.eamt.org, European Association for Machine Translation, EAMT, 1997.