explain vs translate

explain

verb
  • To make something plain or intelligible. 

  • To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to illustrate the meaning of. 

  • To give a valid excuse for past behavior. 

translate

verb
  • To change (something) from one form or medium to another. 

  • To change spoken words or written text (of a book, document, movie, etc.) from one language to another. 

  • Senses relating to a change of position. 

  • To change, or be capable of being changed, from one form or medium to another. 

  • To express spoken words or written text in a different (often clearer or simpler) way in the same language; to paraphrase, to rephrase, to restate. 

  • To generate a chain of amino acids based on the sequence of codons in an mRNA molecule. 

  • To rearrange (a song or music) in one genre into another. 

  • To provide a translation of spoken words or written text in another language; to be, or be capable of being, rendered in another language. 

noun
  • In Euclidean spaces: a set of points obtained by adding a given fixed vector to each point of a given set. 

How often have the words explain and translate occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )