The phrase "the source text" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to the original material from which information is derived or translated.
Example: "In order to accurately translate the document, we must first analyze the source text."
Alternatives: "the original text" or "the reference text".
In some cases, even the source text is unsure of itself.
The oval's black center soon fills with legibly larger versions of every word from the source text.
Most great film adaptations have built their success on ignoring, or at least shunting, key elements of the source text.
Did they feel a need to preserve certain aspects of the source text or a desire to "make it new"?
This novel is the source text for Ridley Scott's dystopian masterpiece Blade Runner, and it's to Philip K Dick's considerable credit that neither book nor film seem dated.
But even this extensive use of screens, video projections and light walls was deeply embedded in the source text, stories by Haruki Murakami.
In the seventeen-track edition of "Holding It Down: The Veterans' Dreams Project," the experiences of war-on-terror veterans of color are used as the source text.
There is a manga tradition of anime adaptations overtaking the source text, the science-fiction critic and blogger Abigail Nussbaum points out.
Many of them worked by translating the source text into an intermediate language or symbolic representation, from which it could be translated into any of several other languages.
Most importantly, the screenplay was in continual ping-pong between James Schamus and two Chinese scriptwriters, teasing out cross-cultural resonances from the source text: the fourth episode of Du Lang Wang's historical fable.
Two Radiohead tracks, Everything In Its Right Place and Jigsaw Falling Into Place, form the source text for Reich's latest composition, Radio Rewrite, premiering at London's Royal Festival Hall on 5 Mar, 2013.
