In inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging, the target rotational motion with respect to the radar line of sight contributes to the imaging ability, whereas the translational motion must be compensated out. This paper presents a novel two-step approach to translational motion compensation using an adaptive range tracking method for range bin alignment and a recursive multiple-scatterer algorithm (RMSA) for signal phase compensation. The initial step of RMSA is equivalent to the dominant-scatterer algorithm (DSA). An error-compensating point source is then recursively synthesized from the selected range bins, where each contains a prominent scatterer. Since the clutter-induced phase errors are reduced by phase averaging, the image speckle noise can be reduced significantly. Experimental data processing for a commercial aircraft and computer simulations confirm the validity of the approach.