"Construe" and "Translate"

It is very common, I apprehend, in language, for two words, originally of the same meaning, or two spellings of the same word, to be gradually appropriated by usage to two subordinate uses, applications, and meanings of the word respectively, and that merely by accident, as to which of the two is taken for one of the subdivisions, and which for the other. We have made such an appropriation in our own time,—despatch and dispatch. It may be curious, however, to inquire how far back the distinction mentioned by your correspondent is found. "Construe," originally, must probably have meant, not to…