This page gives a helpful analogy to help you understand the theory. You take a recipe book out of the library, you pick a recipe in the book. The recipe in the book is very long, with a lot of pictures and useless things, and you don't want to damage the book by using it in the kitchen. With the help of a few utensils, a spoon, a fork, a plate, after a bit of time, you end up with a nice dish. I guess it is life itself, because in the cell, it all happens.
Transcription is the act of copying the recipe into a manageable shape.
An analogy of that is the number of different versions of the same text in the same language. These are transcriptions . They are used to make the text understood by different people speaking the same language. When you translate it you use a different process, for a different purpose, and the result is in a different language. Among the initiatives and programs cited by NSF was The Biology Learning Center.