Is translator and preprocessor the same in c?

Question

I am confused by these two terms. Are they the same?

Answer 1

I think you mean "Compiler" when you say "Translator." They are not the same. Preprocessing is a phase of compilation.

See the Wikipedia article.

Answer 2

The preprocessor is actually run before the compiler and handles special directives like macros.

Answer 3

A preprocessor converts a stream of text tokens into a different stream of tokens.
A compiler converts a stream of tokens into executable code.