Translation (physics)

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In physics, translation is movement that changes the position of an object, as opposed to rotation.

A translation is the operation changing the positions of all objects according to the formula

$(x,y,z) \to (x+\Delta x,y+\Delta y, z+\Delta z)$

where $(Δ x,Δ y,Δ z)$ is a constant vector. Such an operation can be generalized to other coordinates, for example the time coordinate.

For an object without structure, just a subset of space, we can consider the range of the subset under the transformation. Alternatively, we can define a translation as an operation on objects, such that all properties such as color, composition, etc. correspond. The two should not be confused: a translation of space has no fixed points, the fixed points of translation in the other sense are the objects with the corresponding translational symmetry.