Literal translation refers to the result of translating text from one language to another; translating each word independently as opposed to translating the entire phrase. Literal translations also ignore idioms.

For example, a literal translation of the German word "Kindergarten" would be, "garden of children", but in English it refers to the year of school between pre-school and first grade.

Literal translation is where the forms of the original are retained as much as possible, even if those forms are not the most natural forms to preserve the original meaning. Literal translation is sometimes called word-for-word translation (as opposed to thought-for-thought translation). A more accurate, but less well known, label for this approach is formal equivalence translation. Because literal translation focuses on forms of language, it sometimes misses some of the meaning of those forms, since meaning is found not only in the forms of individual words, but also in relationships among words, phrases, idiomatic uses of words, and influences of speaker-hearer, cultural, and historical contexts. Words often have different meanings in different contexts, but a literal translation often does not account for these differences. So literal translation often is not the most accurate form of translation. Compare Essentially literal, Idiomatic translation, and Accuracy.

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Some people feel that a literal translation is the most accurate. But this is often not the case. A literal translation frequently does not accurately transfer the meaning of the original to the target language. Some feel that if a translation is not literal, it is not faithful to the original. But this is also not true. Some people feel that any translation less than literal means inserting the translator's own opinions about the meaning of the original. But this is not true either. A translator does not make up the meaning of the original. He discovers it through commonsense study of the language patterns of the original text. The translator understands, as does anyone who has learned more than one language, that every language expresses its ideas in different ways. The translator understands that much of what we say in any language is figurative, that is, non-literal. If we translate figurative language literally, we have not preserved the true meaning of the original. Some people feel that we should translate literally, then use footnotes or a commentary or a trained person alongside the translation, to explain what the real meaning is behind the literalisms of the translation. But this is not true translation, since true translation allows the user of the translation to understand the original meaning, just as the users of the original text did. We are not talking here about understanding everything possible in the original or translation, such as concepts which are difficult to understand, regardless of how they are expressed. We are only talking about commonsense, standard meaning understood in our normal spoken and written communication.