altermetax

Hello and welcome to my profile 😀
I'm an Italian computer engineering university student with an interest in languages. I mostly spend my time on this website writing translations and transcribing and proofreading lyrics.
If you're new and need advice about the site or help with the Italian language, feel free to ask me anything.

Here's the reason why my status reads “Translating is like coding”:
When you translate, you read a sentence in a language, understand it (that is, turn it into the idea it's expressing) and then try to phrase such idea (almost from scratch, unless the languages are very similar) in another language in a refined way. An analogous thing happens with coding: you need to analyze the way your brain solves a problem and explain it unambiguously and in an elegant manner. In fact, when translating and when programming I almost feel like I'm performing the same process.
Both human languages and programming languages work very differently from the human brain, but they resemble each other very closely. Both have a specific syntax, both can sound good or bad, both have a documentation (or dictionary), both may have synonyms, and so on.
Also, although it doesn't seem to be a widely shared opinion, I think both can be considered art forms.

Websites I find useful:
Dict.cc (great for German ↔ English)
WordReference (for Italian ↔ English)
Reverso Context (for translations in context)
Wiktionary (for any language to English, great for etymology, conjugation and declension)

Have a nice time 🙂