With respect to distinguishing between glossing and translation, meaning is assigned to the text through glossing only indirectly through the unavoidable fact that the ID-gloss, which is primarily intended to identify a sign, actually uses an English word that bears a relationship to the meaning of the sign.
generally speaking, transcriptions are usually created as reference points for, or stages in, linguistic analysis, such as in the creation of scripts for writing systems, for phonological analysis, or for grammatical analysis.