Translation tables are used to map an ID value to a literal value that makes more sense to business users. For example, a company might have a list of IDs that correspond to different geographical locations. A translation table can be set up to map a location ID (such as 101) to the geographical location (such as Atlanta, GA).

Translation tables also increase efficiency and decrease the time to load new data. The translation table data can be loaded less often than the primary data, which helps to minimize the data that is queried in loading new transactions each time a record’s data is updated.