Seriously?! 10 amazing facts about translation
What you (probably) didn’t know about translation yet
Translation is a sacred art
Well, at least translators have their own patron saint: Saint Jerome. A translator himself, he translated the Old and New Testament from Hebrew and Greek to spoken Latin. The anniversary of his death, 30 September, is celebrated as International Translation Day (or “St. Jerome’s Day”).
Translation is an ancient craft
You think Google Translate has been the start of professional translation? Far from it! Let’s jump into the time machine and go way back in time!
Professional translators have been around for thousands of years. The first written translation from one script system to another is believed to have been that of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a collection of literary works from the Babylonian area. Oral translations have probably even been around for a lot longer than that.
Machine translation was around long before Google Translate
Machine translation: That one’s certainly an invention by Google, right? Nope! Let’s get on that time machine again and travel to the past!
More precisely to the year 1954, when IBM and Georgetown University for the first time had a text machine-translated in public. On January 7, the IBM 701 computer automatically translated 250 words from Russian to English – the birth of Google Translate’s great-grandma, so to speak.
Translation is a word workout
On average, a professional translator translates about 250 words per hour. With a full-time job, this equals about 500,000 words per year – not bad, right?
There’s more to translate than you might think
There are an estimated 7,000 languages in the world. The most spoken languages (according to their total number of speakers) are English, Chinese, Hindi and Spanish.
Which one of them is a real nightmare for translators? Well, obviously, there’s no answer to this one. But according to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) the languages that are most difficult to learn for English native speakers (presumably also making them the hardest to translate) are Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
On the other hand, English, French, German and Italian are considered to be relatively easy to translate.
Small but tricky: this word is a real brain wrecker
Do you know which English word is said to be the most difficult to translate?
It’s the little word “set”. Due to its many different meanings and connotations, it can be quite tricky to translate into other languages.
A little example: Depending on the context and preposition, “set” can be translated into German as: setzen, untergehen, einführen, erstarren, wegfahren, anlegen, vorbereiten, bestimmen, schaffen … the list goes on and on!
These are the most translated books in history
What do you think, which book has been translated the most? That one’s easy: It’s the bible. It has been translated into about 698 languages. However, if we’re talking fiction writing, things look a bit different.
Topping the translation charts there is – drum roll! – “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (475 languages), followed by “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi (260 languages).
By the way: In comparison, the “Harry Potter” books still have some catching up to do with “only” about 80 languages …
… and these are the most translated authors
It’s no surprise that you can find some of the biggest names in world literature in this category. According to the “Index Translationum”, a UNESCO database, the three most translated authors worldwide are:
- Agatha Christie
- Jules Verne
- William Shakespeare
Jehova’s Witnesses take it all
What do you think: What’s the most translated website of the entire world wide web? Surely Wikipedia! Or something by Google or Apple? Wrong! The most translated website in the world is the online presence of Jehova’s Witnesses!
With more than 900 languages, they’re obviously quite committed to spreading their faith to every corner of the world.
A translation mistake potentially caused the drop of the atomic bomb
Most of us know about Hiroshima and the basic facts surrounding that dark day in history when the atomic bomb was dropped. One thing most people don’t know is that a translation error might have contributed to the decision to drop the world’s first atomic bomb.
On 26 July 1954, the allied countries submitted a declaration demanding the surrender of Japan. Under pressure by the media, Japan’s Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki allegedly replied that he was “withholding comment”. However, instead the Japanese word “mokusatsu” was translated as “not worthy of comment” – which in turn rankled with the authors of the Potsdam Declaration.
The rest, sadly, is history …
