Verbatim, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is an adverb that means “in exactly the same words as were used originally”. Even though Chinese and English are both SVO languages, they don’t always feature the exact same word order. It would make no sense if verbatim translation is applied. The example below is a proper translation from English to Chinese. Breaking down the Chinese translation, the word items are obviously not word-for-word when compared with the original English text.
| Source: | Every time | she | calls, | he | runs | quickly | to | her. |
| Target: | 她 | 每次 | 叫他， | 他都 | 很快 | 跑 | 過去 | 她那兒。 |
| Literal meaning: | She | every time | calls him, | he also | quickly | runs | to | her |
While verbatim is how transcription is done, such word-for-word method cannot be applied to translation without certain modification. An experienced translator would add or delete some elements and rearrange some word items so the translation is grammatical and makes sense to the target audience. Verbatim translation is very useful for legal, medical, technical and scientific content as they require absolute precision. Verbatim translation is also the best solution for some financial report documents. For other content, especially marketing and literature materials, creative translation should be adopted.