Interesting insights on translation from this old Rhizome article titled “Artifacts: A Conversation Between Hito Steyerl and Daniel Rourke”

In particular it is this line that strikes a chord- “One of the biggest misunderstandings about digital information is that it is replicated identically, without loss or transformation. But anyone who works with such information knows that digital practice is constituted – like perhaps any technology – by malfunction. One has to constantly convert information in order to work with it across different platforms and softwares and on the way it is reformatted, translated, compressed or sometimes even blown up, it is enhanced or diminished: it changes. It changes its format or container or outlook or context.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/mar/28/artifacts/

They talk in the context of glitches but it has relevance beyond.