Cyrus Translation Cornucopia

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Translation, the the only relaible bridge putting different culture in constant contact.

The 5 most pernicious myths promoted by substandard translation and interpretation companies:

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Myth # 1: You can verify the accuracy of a translation by doing a back translation.

It is a common misconception that the quality of a translation can be judged by having a second translator translate a translated text back into its source language. In fact, the opposite is true; the worse the translation, the closer the back translation will adhere to the original. The reason for this is that a bad translation normally follows very closely the wording of the original, but not the meaning. The best examples of this are the word-for-word translations produced by the different online machine translation tools, such as Babel Fish.

Myth # 2: The best translations are done by certified translators.

Contrary to the claims made by countless "certified translators" who advertise on the web and the yellow pages, in the United States there is no such thing as a "certified translator," as there is no official certification program for translators in this country. Next time someone claims to be a "certified translator," ask who certified him.

Myth # 3: A certified translation is a guarantee of quality and accuracy.

In the US, a certified translation is one where the translator has signed an oath before a notary public certifying the accuracy and correctness of the translation, as well as the fact that he is qualified to make such a certification.

Since in the US, there are no restrictions as to who can or cannot claim to be a translator, anyone willing to swear that he or she is qualified to translate into and from any language pair can certify a translation.

Myth # 4: You need to make sure that the translator is from the same country where you'll be sending the translation, so that it will be in the correct dialect.

What constitutes a dialect and what to do about it is one of the most misunderstood concepts in translation, perhaps second only to the "native speaker" syndrome (the pernicious idea, promoted by some language schools, that being a native speaker qualifies a person to translate).

Every major language has regional and class variations, but more importantly, every language also has clear standards and guidelines for correct and incorrect grammar and usage.

Although there may be times when it is appropriate to write in a regional or class dialect (targeted advertising comes to mind), business communications (and this includes technical writings, contracts, legislation, financial statements, etc.) must always be written in standard language.

Myth # 5: For the best quality, make sure that only native speakers do the translations.

Being a native speaker of a foreign language does not make a person a translator, any more than being a native speaker of English makes a person a writer. There are three reasons for this:

A person's knowledge of language is a function of their general and specialized education. A person with a deficient education will have a deficient knowledge of language.

The native language, which is the first language learned by a person, may or may not be the person’s dominant language or language of primary competence. Native speakers can have a grossly inadequate knowledge of their native language, particularly when they have been brought up and educated in a country where a language other than their native language is spoken.

Even if the native speaker has a good education in his or her native language, that does not qualify a person to translate, as language competence is only one of the prerequisites for translating competence.

ISO 2603: Fixed Booths for Simultaneous Interpretation

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General characteristics and equipment

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

Draft International Standards adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75% of the member bodies casting a vote.

Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75% of the national bodies casting a vote.

International Standard ISO 2603 was prepared by ISO/TC43, Acoustics, Subcommittee SC2, Building acoustics.

This third edition cancels and replaces the second edition (ISO 2603:1983).

ISO 2603 was first issued in 1974; it was revised in 1983 and extended in scope to cover facilities for more than six languages. It is based on facilities built since then and evaluated by the Technical Committee of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) and the Joint Service Interpretation-Conferences (JSIC) of the European Commission (EU). The present edition aims to bring the text into line with modern practice and technology as well as to clarify and simplify it for the user.

Annex A of this International Standard is for information only.

Introduction

Interpreters' booths are designed to meet three requirements:

a) acoustic separation between different languages spoken simultaneously, without mutual interference between languages interpreted or with the speaker in the hall;

b) efficient two-way communication between the booths and the conference hall;

c) a comfortable working environment enabling interpreters to maintain the intense effort of concentration required by their work.

Existing facilities, built in compliance with ISO 2603-1983 are still acceptable.

In addition to architects, project engineers, suppliers, etc., it is essential to consult conference interpreters experienced in technical consultancy, from the earliest stages of planning.

1. Scope

This International Standard lays down basic specifications to be considered when initial plans are prepared for building or renovating built-in booths for simultaneous interpretation in new or existing buildings.

It is applicable to all types of built-in booths with built-in or portable equipment.

NOTE 1: Mobile booths for simultaneous interpretation are specified in ISO 4043,

In designing new buildings, booths should be optimally integrated into the structure so that the conference room and the booths constitute a well-balanced unit. Design should also provide daylight for the conference hall and booths.

The requirements of clauses 4 and 5 apply to booths with built-in equipment, as defined in 3.1, and booths with portable equipment, as defined in 3.2.

The dimensional requirements apply equally to semi-permanent booths, as defined in 3.3, for which all other requirements should apply as far as is possible.

In addition to structural and design specifications, this International Standard specifies those components of typical conference facilities, which form the interpreters working environment.

NOTE 2: Clause 12 gives indications concerning the use of public address systems in conjunction with simultaneous interpretation systems.

2. Normative references

The following standards contain provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of this International Standard. At the time of publication, the editions indicated were valid. All standards are subject to revision, and parties to agreements based on this International Standard are encouraged to investigate the possibility of applying the most recent editions of the standards indicated below. Members of IEC and ISO maintain registers of currently valid International Standards.

ISO 140-4:1998, Acoustics - Measurement of sound insulation in buildings and of building elements - Part 4: Field measurements of airborne sound insulation between rooms.

ISO 3382:1997, Acoustics - Measurement of the reverberation time of rooms with reference to other acoustical parameters.

IEC 60914:1988, - Conference Systems - Electrical and audio requirements.

3. Definitions

For the purposes of this International Standard, the following definitions apply:

3.1 booth with built-in equipment: booth intended for simultaneous interpretation containing built-in interpretation equipment

3.2 booth with portable equipment: booth intended for simultaneous interpretation, but not containing built-in interpretation equipment (see 3.4)

3.3 semi-permanent booth: booth not structurally integrated or which is intended to be moved within the building.

3.4 interpreter's control panel: panel containing all controls for listening and speaking.

NOTE The panel is normally a built-in fixture in the booth; if mounted on its own free-standing box, it is known as a console (the usual form for portable equipment).

4. Structural and design requirements for booths

4.1 Siting in relation to the building

Booths shall be located away from any outside sources of disturbance, such as: kitchens, public passages, halls, etc. (see 4.4).

4.2 Siting in relation to the conference hall

4.2.1 General

Booths shall be located at the back and/or sides of the hall, making sure there is good visual contact between all booths and with the control booth. They shall be raised no further above the floor of the hall than is necessary for a clear view (see 4.7) of all proceedings in the hall, i.e. all participants, lecturers, the chairman, etc., as well as all visual aids (projection screen, etc.). The view from the booths into the hall shall not be obstructed by persons standing. Thus, the booth floor should be at least 1,00 m above the hall floor assuming a level floor. Steep viewing angles shall be avoided (particularly with regard to projection screens). In larger halls the furthest distance from booth to rostrum, projection screen, etc. shall not exceed 30 m (see 4.6).

The booths shall be grouped to facilitate visual contact (see 4.7) as well as cabling between them.

4.2.2 Sound control booth

The sound control booth shall be placed close to the interpreters' booths to facilitate access and visual communication between them and provide the operator with a clear view of all proceedings, speakers, projection screen, etc. The operator shall have safe, quick and easy access both to the booths and to the hall.

4.3 Doors

Doors shall provide satisfactory acoustic insulation (see 4.8) and operate silently. They shall not interconnect booths through side-walls. An observation port-hole (no less than 0,20 m x 0,22 m) in the booth door and/or a light outside the door, indicating an active microphone within, are recommended.

Assigned languages and channels should be indicated on or adjacent to doors.

Curtains or baffles shall not be used instead of doors.

4.4 Access

The booths shall have easy access through a separate entrance from outside the hall, to avoid the interpreters disturbing the meeting when coming and going. The access corridor to the booths shall be at least 1,50 m wide to allow for safe and quick passage. Stairs, if any, shall be safe and easy to negotiate, bearing in mind emergencies, disabled persons, the need for quick distribution of documents (often on trolleys) and the transport of equipment. Emergency exits shall be readily accessible and escape routes clearly marked. There shall be rapid access from the booths to the hall.

4.5 Size of booths

4.5.1 General

Each booth shall be wide enough to accommodate the required number of interpreters seated comfortably side by side, each with sufficient table space to work conveniently on several documents spread alongside each other. The booth shall be high and deep enough to provide sufficient volume of air to enable adequate temperature control and draught-free air renewal (see 4.9) as well as sufficient space for the occupants to enter and leave without disturbing one another.

4.5.2 Minimum dimensions (see figure 1)

The size of a booth is governed by the need to provide sufficient work space and air volume per interpreter. The minimum number of interpreters per booth being two, the following minimum dimensions are required:

- width : 2,50 m

- depth : 2,40 m

- height : 2,30 m

NOTE 1 Where feasible, additional height can be an advantage for draught and temperature control.

For conference halls with up to six booths, one or more should be 3,20 m wide (to cover the need for the continuous presence of three interpreters).

For conference halls with more than 6 booths, all booths shall be at least 3,20 m wide.

NOTE 2 There is a growing trend for conferences using six or more languages. For a number of languages, this means at least three interpreters working on a booth; hence the need for so many booths to be at least 3,20 wide.

To avoid resonance effects, the three dimensions of the booth should be different from one another and, to avoid standing waves, the two side walls should not be exactly parallel.

4.6 Visibility

A direct view of the entire conference room, including the projection screen, is essential (see 4.2.1). In very large halls, where the rostrum or projection screen is more than 30 m away, visual support may be used, either in the form of one or more enlarged video display screens, or of video/data display panels in or immediately outside the booth.

4.7 Windows

Front windows shall be across the full width of the booth. The height of the pane shall be at least 1,20 m from the working surface upwards. Its lower edge shall be level with the working surface of the table, or lower (see figure 1).

Side windows, of at least the same height, shall be provided and shall extend from the front window for a length of 1,10 m along the partition between booths.

To ensure an unobstructed maximum range of view from the booths, vertical supports shall be avoided.

Front and side windows shall consist of untinted anti-glare glass satisfying the sound insulation requirements (see 4.8 and ISO 140-4). Panes shall be mounted in such a way as to avoid vibration, glare from hall lighting and mirror effects from inside the booth.

NOTE In the present state of glass technology, good results are obtained by using one vertical pane of laminated glass of adequate thickness in combination with work-lighting in the form of overhead spotlights.

Depending on the type of work lighting used (see 5.2), front panes may have to be slightly inclined.

4.8 Acoustics

The booths shall open onto an area not normally used by delegates, members of staff or the public. It shall not be adjacent to any noise source. Floors and walls in booths and corridors hall in any case be covered with sound-absorbent material.

NOTE Fabric, of sufficient thickness, on walls and perforated ceiling panels (see note in 4.9) have produced good results. It is recommended to use material with a weighted absorption coefficient (according ISO 11654) of a w < 0,6.

Where flooring is hollow, care should be taken to prevent sounding-box effects from footsteps.

Particular attention shall be given to sound-proofing:

- between the interpreters' booths;

- between the interpreters' booths and the control booth;

- between the booths and the conference hall.

The following values shall apply (including air ducts, cable ducts, etc.):

- hall/booth : R'w = 48 dB

- booth/booth : R'w = 43 dB

- booth/corridor : R'w = 41 dB

R'w is defined in ISO 717-1; for measurement see ISO 140-4.

Air ducts (see 4.9) shall be properly sound-proofed to prevent noise transmission from booth to booth. The A-weighted sound pressure level generated by the air-conditioning system (see 4.9), lighting (see 5.2) and other sound sources shall not exceed 35 dB.

Reverberation time (see ISO 3382) inside the booth shall be between 0,3 s and 0,5 s measured in the octave bands from 125 Hz to 4000 Hz (booth unoccupied).

4.9 Air conditioning

As booths are occupied throughout the day, adequate ventilation is required.

The air supply should be 100% fresh (i.e. not recycled). The air-conditioning system shall be independent from that of the rest of the building and of the conference hall.

Air renewal shall be seven times per hour and the carbon dioxide concentration shall not exceed 0,1 %. The temperature shall be controllable between 18°C and 22°C by means of an individual regulator in each booth. Relative humidity shall be between 45% and 65%.

Air velocity shall not exceed 0,2 m/s. Air inlets and outlets shall be placed in such a way that interpreters are not exposed to draughts.

NOTE Good results have been obtained by introducing the air through a perforated ceiling and extracting it through vents at the rear of the booth, in the floor or the rear wall.

Air ducts shall not transmit sound from booth to booth or from other sources (see 4.8). They shall not pass through walls separating booths. To comply with acoustic requirements, noise-generating appliances such as expansion chambers, fireshutters, etc. shall be located outside the booths.

4.10 Cable ducts

Ducts suitable for looping control cables and associated connectors from booth to booth shall be provided. After insertion of cables, the openings shall maintain the sound insulation values of the walls they cross.

Access to ducts should be made easy and should not require the use of special tools.

5. Booth interior

5.1 General

Booth surfaces shall be non-reflecting, fire-resistant and non-toxic. They shall be appropriately sound absorbent (see 4.8) and shall neither attract nor harbour dust (pile carpeting on walls should be avoided) and be easy to clean.

5.2 Lighting

The lighting in the booth shall be independent of that in the hall, as the latter may have to be darkened for the projection of films or slides.

The booths shall be provided with two different lighting systems: one for work and the other for general purposes.

The work light source, which shall be non-fluorescent, is that lighting the working surface. Other lighting is required for various general purposes, for which a switch should be available by the booth door. Dimmer switches, for both systems, should be within reach of the interpreter working. No light source shall cause reflections on booth windows. Both systems, including dimmers and transformers shall be free of magnetic interference and audible noise.

The working surface available to each interpreter (see 4.5.1 and 5.4) shall have an individual adjustable compact table lamp or overhead light source of a least 300 lx, connected to a low voltage circuit. Its switch, within easy reach of the interpreter, should give continuous intensity control over a range from 100 lx to 350 lx, or else provide two levels: one, in the range between 100 lx and 200 lx and the other, between 300 lx and 350 lx (all values to be achieved at working surface level).

Table lamps and the range of tilt of their reflectors shall be so designed as to avoid glare in adjacent working positions or into the hall. The combined work-lighting shall provide coverage of the required intensity over the whole working surface of the booth. All light sources shall generate as little heat as possible and be of a suitable colour.

Lighting systems, including dimmers, shall cause no inductive electrical interference in neighbouring microphone circuits. Switches should be mechanically silent.

Where overhead work-lighting is provided, it shall be so positioned as to avoid shadows being cast by the working interpreter, on the working surface: on documents, equipment, fixtures, etc..

A spare mains outlet with two sockets shall be provided on each side wall. Connections for data transmission are desirable.

5.3 Colours

The colour scheme in the booth shall be appropriate for the restricted working space. Matt finishes should be used for all surfaces and equipment in the booth.

5.4 Working surface and document storage

See figure 1.

The working surface shall be firm enough for use as a writing table and for studying documents, reference books, etc..

It shall be horizontal and covered with shock-absorbent material to deaden noise that would otherwise be picked up by the microphones. The underneath surface shall have a smooth finish.

The characteristics of the working surface shall be as follows:

a) position: at the front of the booth across the full width, affording the seated interpreter an unobstructed view of the proceedings in the hall, care being taken to avoid transmission of vibration through booth walls;

b) height: 0,73 m _ 0,01 m from the floor level of the booth;

c) useable depth (i.e. clear of equipment, fixtures, etc.): 0,45 m in relation to the interpreters' angle of vision into the hall;

d) leg room: minimum depth 0,45 m, minimum height 0,66 m and should not be obstructed by working surface supports.

Document storage:

- shelving or trays for documents should not be placed under the working surface, but should be located towards the rear of the booth, within easy reach of the interpreter;

- light-weight trolleys for documents are recommended.

5.5 Seating

For each interpreter and technician, there shall be a comfortable chair with the following characteristics:

- five legs;

- adjustable height;

- adjustable back-rest;

- arm-rests;

- castors producing no perceptible noise;

- upholstery of heat-dissipating material.

Independent, movable foot-rests should be available.

6. Facilities for interpreters

6.1 Toilets

Separate toilets should be available within easy reach of the booths.

6.2 Interpreters' room

It is desirable to provide an interpreter's room near the booths, which interpreters and operators may use when not on immediate duty. It shall be sufficiently large to accommodate at least as many persons as there are working positions in the booths. It should have a private entrance and daylight.

It is preferable to divide this room into two areas serving the following purposes:

a) study of documents and posting of notices;

b) relaxation and stand-by.

The following equipment and furnishings are required:

- easy chairs, chairs and tables;

- cloakroom or coat-rack;

- telephone (inside and local outside lines);

- notice board (for posting assignments, etc.);

- individual pigeon-holes, or space to deposit personal belongings, documents, etc.

A separate outlet for a data modem is recommended. A photocopy machine should be available nearby.

7. Sound equipment in the interpreters' booths

7.1. General

The full specifications (numerical data included) for this purpose are given in IEC 60914. The following outline is given as a general indication, but equipment used should always comply with the latest version of IEC 60914.

7.2 Frequency response

The overall system (comprising microphone input at the speaker's position, amplifier stages, level controls, output terminals and interpreters' control panel for headphones), shall correctly reproduce audio-frequencies between 125 Hz and 12500 Hz. A gradual roll-off at the lower end of the frequency response is recommended in order to improve speech intelligibility.

7.3 Amplitude non-linearity

The system shall be free of perceptible distortion.

7.4 Noise and hum

Noise and hum shall not noticeably affect speech intelligibility.

7.5 Cross-talk between channels

Cross-talk from other channels (at the terminals for the interpreter's headphones) is to be avoided.

7.6 Level control

Level control of the floor channel should be manual. When automatic level control is used, compressor-limiters shall conform to IEC 60914.

8. Interpreters' control panel/console (see 3.4)

8.1 General

There shall be one control panel/console for each interpreter, containing individual controls for listening and speaking, including the relevant indicators. However, where there is no alternative, dual control consoles may be used by no more than two interpreters per booth, each interpreter having a full set of controls.

The control panel (see 3.4) may be on a free-standing console, but is normally fitted into the working surface at a convenient ergonomic angle (see IEC 60914) without obstructing the view of the room. It should be mounted in the interpreter's direct line of vision into the hall, leaving at least 0,45 m clear to the edge of the table in front of the interpreter (see 5.4), so as not to encroach on the available work space.

NOTE 1 If consoles are installed for permanent use, they should be sunk appropriately in the working surface.

Control panel/console dimensions shall be: (width x height x depth):

- maximum: 0,40 m x 0,15 m x 0,21 m;

- minimum: 0,30 m x 0,05 m x 0,125 m.

NOTE 2 For fitted control panels, the height above the working surface should not exceed 0,10 m.

The surface of the control panel shall be matt and non-reflecting.

Indicator lights shall be confined to active functions (microphone "ON", channel selected, channel occupied, etc.) and shall be in the immediate vicinity of the corresponding controls. The microphone "ON" light shall be evident to anyone present in the booth, without disturbing the occupants. In addition, a ring-shaped luminant on the microphone itself is recommended.

8.2 Controls

The status of all selector controls and switches shall be clearly recognisable.

On each control panel, controls shall be arranged according to ergonomic criteria into distinct areas as follows:

a) the listening area containing:

- an incoming channel selection device,

- a preselector for relay listening,

- a volume control,

- a separate tone controls for treble and bass;

b) the monitoring area, containing:

- monitoring loudspeaker with volume control and channel selector (if requested);

c) the microphone area, containing:

- an "ON/OFF" switch, with associated indicator light (automatically reverting the channel to the speaker (floor channel) in the "OFF" position),

- a muting device, whereby the channel is not returned to the floor channel, but which switches off the microphone indicator light;

d) the outgoing channel selection area, containing:

- the outgoing channel selection device and relevant displays and indicators;

e) the call facility area (optional), containing:

- call channel key to chairman/lecturer/control booth (optional),

- an incoming call facility (flashing indicator lights),

- call-line key.

Where a "system-ready" indicator is provided, it should be unobtrusive.

9. Functions of controls

9.1 Incoming channel selection device

Incoming channel selectors shall enable direct selection of any channel, without delay. These shall cause no mechanical or electrical noise. No short-circuiting shall occur between two channels when operating these controls.

9.2 Incoming channel pre-selection device

Incoming channel pre-selection shall be provided for at least one incoming language channel and the original channel.

Interpretation systems with more than eight language channels (plus one floor channel) shall provide for pre-selection of at least two incoming channels and the original channel.

9.3 Volume control

For adjusting listening levels, potentiometers with logarithmic progression shall be used which are audibly effective throughout their full range. Potentiometers shall be of high quality.

A hearing-damage warning, incorporated in the volume control is strongly recommended.

9.4 Tone controls

A stepless bass control shall be provided to attenuate lower frequencies. A stepless treble control shall also be provided to enhance higher frequencies. Bass and treble controls should be independent of each other throughout their respective ranges.

9.5 Headphone/headset terminals

For each interpreter work position, one headphone/headset connector socket is required, to the left of each work position, suitably fitted under the free-edge of the working surface, so that connector leads/cables to the control panel/console pass under the table and do not get in the way of the working interpreter or trail on the floor.

NOTE For the left-handed, it us useful to provide a second socket to the right of at least one work position per booth.

Where portable equipment is to be used (see 3.2), the connector lead/cable should be fitted with a plug to connect with the headphone/headset socket in the console.

9.6 Monitor loudspeakers

The function of the monitor loudspeaker(s) is to allow interpreter(s) to remove their headphones temporarily and continue to follow proceedings or to hear a channel different from that received on the headphones while the booth is silent.

This loudspeaker shall normally reproduce the floor channel and shall be muted automatically as soon as one of the microphones in that booth is activated; it shall have its own volume control and channel selector, if included, which should be independent of the incoming channel selector for the headphones.

9.7 Microphone controls

A control switch and a red indicator light shall be provided. The indicator light shall be more visible than any other indicator and evident to anyone present in the booth. If more than one microphone is activated in the same booth or on the same outgoing channel, the indicator light of the microphones concerned should flash, or interlocking should be used.

The status of the switch should be clearly recognisable by touch.

A self-releasing muting key to cut out the booth channel only, without switching back to the floor channel, shall be provided to allow the interpreter to cough or to clear his/her throat. Pressing of this key shall extinguish the "microphone ON" indicator light.

Switching the microphone ON or OFF shall make no mechanical or electrical noise perceptible by the delegates.

When the interpreter's microphone is OFF, the floor channel shall be automatically linked to the outgoing channel concerned.

9.8 Outgoing channel selection device

In addition to the assigned channel, each control panel shall have provision for selecting at least two other outgoing channels, independently of other panels in the same booth. The channel selected shall be clearly indicated, close to the selector, giving channel numbers and languages in intelligible form, i.e. alphanumerically.

Depending on practice, it should be possible to interlock outgoing channels, in order to prevent microphones in different booths from being connected to the same channel.

As a warning that another microphone is active on a given channel, when a second one is activated on the same channel, the "microphone ON" indicators should flash on the control panels/consoles concerned.

9.9 Call channel (to chairman/lecturer/control booth)

In the event of breakdown (for example a delegate starting to speak without a microphone or other emergency), interpreters should be able to warn the chairman and/or lecturer and technician discreetly via a special audio-link.

Where this link is operated from the control panel, a special key shall activate it, regardless of the microphone switch position.

9.10 Call-line key (messenger)

Provision should be made for a key by which a light or bell may be activated to call for documents, etc., from the usher.

9.11 Colour code for indicator lights

The following colours shall be used for indicator lights or light-emitting diodes (LEDs):

Colour
Function

red microphone ON
red outgoing channel engaged (busy/live)
yellow/amber/green for all other functions

No luminant should be used for indicating "microphone OFF" status

10. Interpreters' headphones

One set of headphones per interpreter shall be provided. Headphones shall have the following characteristics:

a) two earphones per set. Health requirements should be borne in mind when choosing the material and shape of headphones (earphones with earpieces inserted into the ear, or which fully enclose the ear are not acceptable). Where foam padding is provided, for hygienic reasons, it should be replaceable and the headphones wearable without it.

b) frequency range: 125 Hz - 12500 Hz;

c) mass: < 100 g for headphones, < 200 g for headsets, excluding the cable and connector;

d) ear contact pressure : < 2,5 N;

e) headband: adjustable in length and sufficiently flexible to adapt to individual ear pressure requirements. It should not provoke perspiration;

f) connection to the socket at table edge by a lead approximately 1,50 m long and terminating in a non-locking plug (see 9.5).

NOTE Where free-standing consoles are used, the lead length should be adapted accordingly (see 9.5).

11. Booth microphones

There shall be one microphone for each interpreter. The directional characteristics of microphones shall be such that the interpreter can speak into it at a convenient distance while in a comfortable position. Microphones shall be mounted so as to avoid transmission of noises of mechanical origin. Headset combinations may be used, but do not suit all interpreters.

12. The use of public address systems in conjunction with simultaneous interpretation systems

Acoustic feedback and echoes in the hall may impair simultaneous interpretation and, in extreme cases, block the memory processes and/or damage hearing.

Moreover, part of each audience depends on headphone reception, which may be drowned by loudspeakers when operated at their normal level. Indeed some public address systems, which are not compatible, will cause interference. Therefore, every precaution shall be taken both, in the design and the volume control of the public address system, to avoid echo and feed-back from loudspeakers to microphones in the hall.

When the use of speech reinforcement cannot be avoided (for example, the majority of participants listening to conference proceedings in the original language), public address systems should be operated at their lowest level.

In order to provide for effective control in such situations, simultaneous (multi-channel) systems and public address (single channel) systems should:

- be fed from a single microphone system;

- have separate volume controls allowing individual level adjustment for each system, independently, so that lowering the public address level does not reduce the signal strength available to interpreters.

Level controls of the two systems should be located close to each other to enable both levels to be monitored in the same room, preferably by the same operator.

Annex A

(informative)

Bibliography

[1] ISO 717-1:1996, Acoustics - Rating of sound insulation in buildings and of building elements - Part 1: Airborne sound insulation.

[2] ISO 4043:1998, Mobile booths for simultaneous interpretation - General characteristics and equipment.

[3] ISO 11654:1997, Acoustics - Sound absorbers for use in buildings - Rating of sound absorption.

Globalization and the Politics of Translation Studies

2005-04-29T06:12:00.004-07:00

by:Anthony Pym

Intercultural Studies Group
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona, Spain

Paper delivered to the conference Translation and Globalization (Canadian Association of Translation
Studies) in Halifax, Canada, 29 May 2003. Possibly for publication in Meta. Pre-print version 2.2. August 2003. To download this paper in pdf. format, click on the link below:

Abstract:

Globalization can be seen as a consequence of technologies reducing the costs of communication. This
reduction has led both to the rise of English as the international lingua franca and to an increase in the
global demand for translations. The simultaneous movement on both fronts is explained by the divergent
communication strategies informing the production and distribution of information, where translation can
only be expected to remain significant in the latter. The fundamental change in the resulting
communication patterns is the emergence of one-to-many document production processes, which are
displacing the traditional source-target models still used in Translation Studies. Translation Studies might
nevertheless retain a set of problematic political principles that could constitute its own identity with
respect to globalization. Such principles would be expressed in the national and regional organization of
the discipline, in the defense of minority cultures, and in a general stake in cultural alterity. The possible
existence of such principles is here examined on the basis of three instances where the Translation Studies might address globalization in political terms: the weakness of the discipline in dominant monocultures, the possible development of an international association of Translation Studies, and the rejection of the nationalist boycotts of scholars.

Here we shall attempt to model globalization as an economic process with certain
consequences for the social role of translation. Those consequences will then be
seen as affecting the political organization of Translation Studies as a scholarly
discipline. That general process is held to have certain elements of irreversibility thanks
to its grounding in technological change. Translators will mostly have to come to terms
with those elements, as will everyone else. There are, however, political processes that
build on globalization but should not be identified with it. Those processes also have
consequences for translation but are not to be considered inevitable. Some of them can
be resisted or influenced by the use or non-use of translation. Those political processes
can thus be indirectly affected by a scholarly Translation Studies, which might thus
develop its own politics with respect to globalization. This means that Translation
Studies should seek to understand and explain the effects of globalization, without
pretending to resist them all. At the same time, it should attempt to influence the more
negative political processes within its reach, developing its political agenda and
cultivating its own political organization. In this, the dialectics play out between the
technological and the political, between the things we must live with and the things we
should try to change. Only with this double vision should we attempt to take a position
with respect to globalization.

The Technological Globalization, for our present purposes, results from a progressive reduction in the costs of communication and transport. The term can mean many other things as well; the
current theories cover everything from the state of markets to the condition of the soul;
but for us, here, globalization will be no more than a set of things that can happen when
distance becomes easier to conquer. Let us model those things; let us try to connect
them with translation and its study.

Here is one model. As technology improves, we can move things further and more
efficiently, just as we can potentially communicate more efficiently and over greater
stretches of time and space. What is reduced on both these levels might be called the
transaction costs, understood as the total effort necessary just to get the objects moved
or the communication under way. Different technologies structure these costs in
different ways. Sometimes apparently slight changes can have large-scale effects. The
technological move from parchment to paper, for example, cheapened rewriting
processes, enabling multiple revisions, greater teamwork and wider distribution. Not by
chance, the arrival of paper coincided with the significant translation activities in
Baghdad in the ninth and tenth centuries, and with those in Hispania in the twelfth and
thirteenth (see Pym 2000a). Similarly, the printing press enabled much wider
distribution, at the same time as it required the fixing of a definitive text. This led to
spelling conventions and the standardization of national languages, while the ideally
definitive text promoted greater awareness of individualist discourse (the style of the
author), with corresponding calls for individualist translators. The age of print was also
that of national languages and the individual translator. And what now of our electronic
means of communication? They are mostly cheaper still, allowing transaction costs to
be structured in quite different ways. At some point, let us suppose, those costs become
so low and dispersed that they no longer coincide with anything like the borders of a
nation state. One might then start to talk about electronically based globalization. The
general process, the reducing of transaction costs, is nevertheless the one that has been
continuing for centuries.

What consequences might that extended process have for translation, upto and
including our electronic age? With cursory glances at recent history, a certain chain of
reasoning can be linked as follows:

• As transport and communication become cheaper, more things are moved and
communicated over greater distances. This hypothesis is in accordance with the
assumed benefits of trade and the unhappy supposition that people tend to do
everything that technology makes it possible for them to do. As precarious as the
hypothesis might be in human terms, the statistics for global transport and
communications do indicate an accelerating rise.

• There is thus more communication. This is not only because it is easier to
communicate but also because there are more moving things about which to
communicate, more possible communication partners to talk to, more
possibilities for communication about the resulting communication, and indeed
more technology to talk about in the first place. Did we ever imagine, prior to
email and mobile phones, that so much needed to be said?

• The quantitative rise in communication is first within the borders of cultures and
languages (since there is less resistance from cultural and linguistic differences),
then progressively across those borders.

• When communication regularly crosses the borders of languages and cultures, it
tends to wash away those same borders. Thus were the local patois and fiefdoms
swamped by the vernaculars and nation states. Thus, also, are the nation states
and their languages transformed into parts of greater regions. And so, too, have
the regions formed into intercontinental markets with a growing lingua franca.
The end of that process would be communication on a truly planetary scale.
Prior to that point, however, globalization is not global; it is a convenient
misnomer for an incomplete development.

• Globalization thus creates the need for common languages, therefore the need
for fewer languages, and now the need for just one lingua franca, English.

• As the borders are washed away, so too is the need for translation. We will soon
all speak English all the time, so the whole translation profession is doomed to
extinction. Translation Studies will lose its object, and we might as well face up
to the fact. Such are the consequences of technology.

There is a lot wrong with that model, and not just because its conclusion is sad. The
model can be used to reduce globalization to cultural homogenization, to McDonalds
and Coca Cola and Microsoft ruling the world, as is done often enough. Globalization
quickly becomes a process to be resisted, as if there were an enemy somewhere
constantly pulling the strings, as if there were always causal strings to be pulled, as if
we faced a for-or-against situation of some kind, as if there were no technology at the
base of change. In need of opposition, some would occasionally try to read the model in
reverse, courageously hoping the evils of globalization can be countered by politically
promoting languages, by increasing the number of translations, or simply by translating
differently (cf. the “call to action” in Venuti 1995). The tide advances, Canut retreats; so
if Canut advances, the tide will retreat? Here are a handful of reasons why those simple
cause-and-effect models fail:

􀂃 Despite the tragic decline in the number of the world’s living languages, the number
of translations would so far seem to have increased with similar drama. Yes,
increased. For statistics, see the Index Translationum since 1932 (under the auspices
of UNESCO since 1948, computerized since 1979), publishers’ data reported in
Ganne and Minon (1992), snippets of the same in Venuti (1995, 1998), yearly
reports from the European Commission’s Translation Service, estimates made by
the American Translators Association and French official registers (cf. Gouadec
2002: 1), regular LISA reports on the growth of the localization sector in recent
years, and the number of languages and varieties allowed for in your word processing
program.

1 The statistics might all be considered partisan and
fragmentary, yet they all indicate a constant rise in the numbers of translations
carried out in the world. We are aware of no numbers that intimate a fall. This rise
would be alongside (not opposed to) the growth of international English.
Globalization would seem to promote both the lingua franca and the demand for
translations. If we cannot explain this apparent paradox, then perhaps we are not
grasping globalization. Our acts of political resistance are likely to be well meant,
well reasoned, politically correct, and poorly aimed.

1 One might also cite the spectacular growth in the number of translator-training institutions during the
1990s. One hesitates, however, to relate this rise directly to growth in the labor market for translators. In
many situations, translator training has grown for reasons more convincingly associated with the
dominance of international English, notably in order to employ teachers of languages other than English
(cf. Pym 2000a for the case of Spain).

􀂃 The real and tragic decline in the number and diversity of the world’s living
languages probably has more to do with urbanization. The same technologies that
restructure transaction costs also bring people in from plains and down from
mountains, in a way that is not easily reversible by means of mere communication.

􀂃 Globalization, in our technological sense, mostly affects the discourses where the
technology for cross-cultural transport and communication is actually used. Many
parts of our lives are not subject to it in any radical way; our loves, hates and dreams
often proceed virtually untouched, as do local and national politics, for example.
Globalization is by no means the only narrative in town. As Brian Mossop correctly
pointed out at the Halifax conference, state-financed translations across Canada’s
official bilingualism are affected by technology and transaction costs, yet they by no
means conform to general models of globalization. Other histories are also working
themselves out. Globalization is not global, nor need it be.

􀂃 Those discourses that are affected quite probably change much more than the simple
quantities would suggest. The production of technology and global services moves
the very places from which discourses are initiated and elaborated. And that, above
all, is what we have to try to understand and explain.

These objections should produce a slightly more complex view. Globalization is
neither the friend nor the foe of translation. It is quite simply changing many of the
situations in which translation is called upon to operate. And it is doing so on a
technological level that involves elements of irreversibility. Translation scholars should
be able to grasp and respond to that process.

How is it that the numbers of translations might increase at the same time as the use
of English triumphs and many languages are forced into twilight? This is what I have
elsewhere termed the “diversity paradox”. By rights, the rise of the lingua franca should
be reducing cultural diversity, whereas the use of translation should be maintaining the
same diversity. So how can the two processes occur at the same time? How exactly
could globalization lead both to an international lingua franca and to a rise in the market
for translations?

The answer to this must lie in the increasing differences between the economic
categories of production and distribution.

The effect of globalization on production can broadly be seen as an extension of
Ricardan trade, creating centers of international specialization. Portugal was (and still
is) good at producing wine; Britain was better (at that time) at manufacturing cloth, so it
was theoretically preferable for each to specialize and for systematic trade to result.
Globalization, promoting quantitative increase in international trade, should allow
further specialization of this kind, and thus greater regional diversity. Any neo-classical
economist will tell you that international trade promotes specialization, not global
homogeneity. There is much evidence in support of that view. We tend not to complain
about globalization when our port comes from Porto, our scotch from Scotland, our
films from Hollywood or Bollywood or Cairo, our suits from Italy, our software
programs from the west coast of the United States, or indeed our software localization
from Ireland. Regional specialization is not hard to find; it would be much harder to
argue that globalization allows everything to be produced everywhere.

This diversity-through-trade argument should probably help us explain why
translation is still very necessary. Products have to be moved from the specialized
places in which they are produced; their information thus has to cross linguistic and
cultural borders; documents have to be translated.

Much as Ricardan economics was good for the early nineteenth century, it requires
adaptation before it can say much about our own situation. Let us suggest three
modifications:

􀂃 The main point to add is quite obvious. The regional diversity gained on the level of
trade is progressively lost on the level of distribution. One consequence of
specialized production is greater homogeneity in consumption. Economists tend to
privilege production (as indeed do linguists); cultural critics are usually more
worried about the globalization of distribution. The main point is that the regional
configurations of the two levels are now remarkably different. How does this
concern translation? For a start, the cultural distances between the points of
production and consumption have been stretched to extremes, requiring enormous
amounts of communication, some of which is translational.

􀂃 The second point should also be easy enough. Few of the classical theories
envisaged the places of production and consumption as being anything other than
nation states or regions, where internal cultural diversity would not disturb the boxes
where the statistics sat. As our few anecdotal examples should indicate, that is no
longer the case. Production is usually specialized on a scale smaller than the nation
state (except for small states like the Caribbean island of Grenada, which is the
world’s second largest exporter of nutmeg). We tend to talk about a productive
focus defined by local geographies or, in the case of technological production, the
human and financial resources networked in cities. Production is eminently local,
often surprisingly so. It develops centers of specialization in the very face of
political calls for decentralization, and despite the technological possibilities for a
more international networking of the relations of production. In the age of
globalization, production is certainly not global in any homogenizing sense. People
still need to see each other from time to time, to inhabit the same air, to partake of a
localized production culture. What does this have to do with translation? Well, for
instance, why is it that the translators working exclusively by internet struggle to
find clients and must fight to keep them? Why do translators themselves form
companies where they can meet with each other face to face? Indeed, in the age of
electronic communication we have the largest centralized translation bureau in the
world, in Brussels-Luxembourg (admittedly split in shameless lip-service to
decentralization, and with a wide dispersed fringe of freelancers). Such nodes tend
to be located near the centers of production (in the case of Brussels let us allow that
political decisions are produced). In all of this, the human values of contact have
much to say, particularly in view of the key role played by trust in the translator’s
interpersonal relations. Yet there is still more.

􀂃 Perhaps the main modification to be made to Ricardan diversity-through-trade is
that language and communication technologies must now be seen as integral parts of
the means of production. When the wine had to flow to Britain and the cloth had to
unfold in Portugal, some kind of English-Portuguese translation was theoretically
needed for the contact situation. The language interface was a minor transaction cost
that had to be covered by the benefits of trade. However, once we are actually
producing language and communication (as does the Brussels eurocracy, for
example), language and communication technologies start to configure the very
places of production. Such places need not correspond to the presumed primacy of
nation states, regions, or anything other than the relations of production themselves.
For Ricardan economics, port wine is produced in Portugal because that is where
they do it for the least expenditure of labor. On the other hand, much computer
programming tends to be done in technical varieties of English because that is the
language most adapted to the task, no matter where the actual production is carried
out. In the latter case, which is the kind of globalization most in tune with an
electronic age, language and communication help form the place of production.
People become increasingly able to participate in relations of production
independently of the cultures and languages that they previously had, and
independently of the culture and language operative in the country where they work.
The move from the first model (language and communication as additional trade
costs) to the second (language and communication as forming relations of
production) may be of little importance in many fields. Yet it assumes radical
proportions in the domains of production most affected by technology, particularly
communications technology. After all, those are the fields where the decrease in
transaction costs has most impact.

The important point about the revised model, the one where language and
communication actually enter the relations of production, is that the configuration of
production can be radically different from the tendency to homogenization operative on
the level of distribution.

Only that revised model can really explain the prolonged vitality of translation. Only
that model can see languages as playing one role in production and quite another in
distribution. To put it in a reductive nutshell, the lingua franca plays its global role as a
factor of production, whereas translation plays its marketing role as a tool of
distribution. On this view, translation into the languages of production should be
fundamentally different, in general, from translation from those languages. And that
asymmetry is so basic and so powerful that little resistance seems called for.
To tell the same story again:

Let us suppose that the economies of globalization centralize production in the fields
most affected by technology. In those fields, knowledge is increasingly produced and
circulated in the lingua franca. We know that major multinationals use English as their
default language, even when they have been set up in Germany or Finland. The
technical discourses thus produced in English circulate among the productive locales in
English, reaching the knowledge community wherever it may exist, without need of
translation. In this respect, international English would be operating like the
international Latin of the medieval period, facilitating numerous exchanges and
potentially democratizing the production of knowledge. If you want to do science, you
learn English, just as all scholars once had to learn Latin. This is not necessarily a bad
thing. Nor, obviously, is it an entirely new phenomenon.

Within those spheres of production, translation tends to play a marginal role. For
example, scholars with weak English may seek to have their papers published in that
language and will require translation accordingly. Yet even that role is diminishing. The
translator working from, say, Catalan into English would now more probably be called
upon to revise the Catalan scientist’s draft already written in English. To do so is simply
more efficient, given that the specialist is more in command of the technical discourse
in English than is the generalist translator. Thanks to the same logic, we find that the
English section of the European Commission’s Translation Service is becoming a group
of scribes, official rewriters, rather than translators in any strict language-meetslanguage
sense.

The picture is quite different if we now consider the linguistic demands operative in
the distribution of products. Globalization moves things, trade increases, and
innumerable products reach consumers who do not share the language and culture of the
producers. Here we find that translation is not only increasing, but that it is changing its
key concepts. In the industries most given to marketing in local languages, the reigning
concept tends to be “localization” (loosely seen as translation plus cultural adaptation).
More important than the names, however, are a few key changes in discursive
production:

􀂃 Whereas translation is still thought of in terms of language-meets-language
situations, where is it meaningful to talk about “source” and “target”, globalized
distribution operates on the basis of one-to-many, which is a fundamentally different
geometry. We find centralized production of the one “internationalized” text or
product, which is then more efficiently “localized” (translated and adapted) to a
wide range of consumer environments (“locales”).

􀂃 In the one-to-many scenario, time becomes an essential feature of discursive success
conditions. This can be seen in the ideals of the simultaneous shipment of new
products, where a translation may be correct but is not operative if it arrives late. It
is also a feature of translation services in multilingual bureaucracies.

􀂃 The sheer size of most one-to-many communication projects means there is an
increase in the hierarchical control and standardization of translation. “Localization”
ideally means translation plus adaptation, but these two aspects are increasingly
separated. The various memory programs and localization tools restrict the
translator’s decisions, returning us to the paradigm of phrase-level equivalence, and
leaving adaptation to specialists in marketing.

The basic geometry of the one-into-many by no means covers all translation
situations. It nevertheless successfully accounts for the diversity paradox, in ways that
translation between source and target cannot. In the fields most subject to globalization,
translation into English is thus significantly different, in its power relations if nothing
else, from localization from English. This is a major change that Translation Studies has
been very late in perceiving; our discipline is still largely reluctant to convert it into
properly theoretical concepts.

The discourse of localization has come from the industry itself, most notably from
the fields of software, marketing and international information services. Translation
Studies has tended not to see those changes, even though the importance of one-tomany
geometries has been recognized for quite some time (cf. Lambert 1989). This is
perhaps because our sights have more traditionally been set on the prestigious
international organizations where translation is thought of in more traditional ways.
Entities like the United Nations and the European Union depend on translation for their
very functioning, and do so according to a model of ideally symmetrical rights for
official languages. In that world, the language-meets-language model is still supposed to
work, even when the technologies and economies say otherwise. The legal fictions of
those organizations are also extremely convenient for many of the ideologies that
circulate in Translation Studies, most notably for the binary models we use for the act of
translation itself. Nor are the models limited to just a few high-profile organizations.
There are more than 5,000 intergovernmental organizations operative in today’s world
(see the annual Yearbook of International Organizations); most of them adopt some
kind of bilingual or multilingual policy, if only to please the governments they depend
on. (Note, though, that there are almost five times as many international nongovernmental
organizations, whose main preference is for the relative efficiencies of
monolingualism.)

This situation suggests that Translation Studies has some kind of intuitive interest in
certain models of translation and not in others. Perhaps more exactly, Translation
Studies has a certain allegiance to situations and organizations in which translation
reigns supreme, without subordination to lingua francas, language learning, or tight
budgetary constraints on communications. This makes a certain sense, since we are
talking about people who do choose to study translation rather than economics or
general communication (this paper is obviously written from the perspective of the
latter). It also makes a kind of intuitive sense when we witness the relative ease with
which the cross-cultural ethical ideals of a Berman or a Venuti, for example, are
accepted within the research community as being beyond reproach. Few feel any need
to calculate their ideals in economic terms, to relate them to technological history, or
even to question the facile their assumptions of source vs. target.

Our purpose here is not to pull apart that political correctness, nor to propose our
own. We are instead intrigued by the possibility that, perhaps without knowing it, and
despite all our internal divisions, the very idea of Translation Studies presupposes
adherence to certain fundamental principles. Those would be the principles that are
easily accepted when formulated; they would be the ones considered too evident to
challenge. Such principles would surely be the basis for some kind of political identity.
They could also constitute a fundamental reason for our general failure to conceptualize
the consequences of globalization, particularly the one-to-many geometry and the ways
in which the patterns of production and distribution have diverged. Translation Studies
struggles to perceive the contexts in which its own politics are developed.

The Political

Let us suppose, for the sake of an argument, that there are people who work in the
overlaps of cultures. This does not mean these people are somehow without culture, nor
that they are in any way universal, nor at an ideal mid-point, nor immobile, without
allegiances, nor any such pap. These are simply people whose professions require that
they know and operate in more than one culture at once. Further, the people we are
particularly interested in know and operate on exchanges between cultures. These are
the people who move things across language boundaries, who negotiate treaties, who
produce our transnational news and entertainment, who surround our lives with a
million products received in cultures different to the ones they were produced in. Such
would be the people of professional intercultures: translators, diplomats, traders,
negotiators, technicians manipulating complex codes, when and wherever products and
their texts cross cultural boundaries.

Such people exist. You and I might even be among their number, as might our
multilingual students. The question here is not just who we are, but what we stand for
and how we should act. Those aspects can scarcely be separated.
What does it mean to act politically? On the face it, the phrase would involve actions
influencing relations between people, particularly the loyalties and alliances that form
power and direct its flows. The political pronoun is certainly “we”, variously inclusive
or exclusive. To act politically, in the intercultural field, could thus mean siding with
one culture or the other, or with one aspect of a culture against another, to some degree
or another, for one reason or another. I have suggested elsewhere that there are ethical
ways of thinking about such acts, without assuming allegiance by birthright or pay-role.
It is enough for the intercultural subject to seek long-term cooperation between cultures,
or to start reasoning from there (cf. Pym 2000b). Although sweepingly general, this
precept is not adequate to all occasions. How, for instance, should it be applied to
problems where what is at stake is the identity of Translation Studies, the constitution of
our own intercultural “we”?

Where, for example, do “we” stand with respect to globalization? Our research
community, perhaps a few hundred people, possibly with several hundred more looking
on, is surely too small to seek comparison. Our professional intercultures only loosely
resemble those in which production is now specialized; our key productive locations are
only in some cases next to centers of capitalist production. Thanks in part to academic
distance, we do not particularly follow the orders or either production or distribution.
That is certainly one of the reasons why we fail to keep abreast of the way those
systems are developing. It is perhaps also why we tend to maintain allegiance to the
ideals of former models, believing in translation even when production systems have no
great need of it. At the same time, that academic distance might also be why we risk
having little of currency to say, or too little power for our voice to be heard.
One can only test those hypotheses on the basis of concrete situations. Here we will
briefly consider three cases in which our politics meet globalization, and the ways in
which our political configuration might respond.

Empires

Translation Studies tends to be proportionally strong in the smaller cultures where
translation plays a quantitatively significant role (here we are thinking of cases like
Belgium, Holland, Israel, Finland, Catalonia, Galicia, Quebec). This is no rule, but it
helps explain why our perspectives often concern the defense of minority cultures, the
use of general models of cultural alterity, and a certain intuitive focus on distribution
rather than production (cf. the target-side epistemologies of Descriptive Translation
Studies). A worrying correlative of this is the relative weakness of Translation Studies
in the larger monolingual countries where political power tends to accrue, most notably
in the United States. We might thus venture that Translation Studies tends to form its
intercultures in situations where alterity is already operative as a feature of distribution.
That would be where its politics develop. That is also the place from where one looks at
production systems, at the centralized intercultures where English reigns, and feigns to
find the enemy of translation.

As we have argued, that vision is short-sighted. It confuses the technological with the
political. What it tends to see, instead of globalization, is politics of a hyperpower that
has unusually limited awareness of cultural minorities, supranational organizations, or
virtually any of the things that translation might stand for. More specifically, in recent
months the United States of George W. Bush has virtually done away with any pretense
to international law. Treaties have been revoked, wars have been initiated on the
weakest of excuses, international human-rights conventions are violated on a daily
basis, international courts are seen as fine ideas only for as long as no US citizen will be
subject to them. Translation serves the institutions that are thus being flouted. When
right is decided unilaterally, without need for consultation or negotiation, or when the
consultations and negotiations are simply ignored because they do not reach the right
conclusion, then the need for translation is obviated and our object of study will indeed
serve no purpose. This is what is to be resisted. But it is not to be mapped onto the
inevitabilities of globalization.

To be even more blunt: In our small academic political acts, we have before us at
least two possible models of postmodern empire. One, in Europe, incorporates
translation into its very principles. The other, in the United States, ignores many of the
virtues to which translation might hope to contribute. The first kind of empire gains
admirable flexibility and stability, just as its weak identity makes it unsuited to any riskridden
action in the world. The second kind of empire has the unity and force needed for
action, yet sadly misunderstands the diversity of human cultures.

What should Translation Studies be doing in such a situation? Within Europe, much
work is needed to improve efficiencies and to find ways to combine translation with the
use of lingua francas, transcending the jealousies of the nation states. Our key task,
however, should be with respect to the more powerful empire, the United States. In that
latter context, translation has remained virtually excluded from the agenda of critical
studies; it is a straggler in the league of cultural studies; it is attached as an adjunct to
training in interpreting or occasionally as an application of literary studies; there is
lamentably little connection with anything like the global configuration of cultures;
much as all scholars in the humanities have an opinion on translation; very few
approach it an as object of study. Sincere praise should be given to the Americans who
have fought against this tendency: Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Lawrence Venuti, Douglas
Robinson, Edwin Gentzler, Maria Tymoczko, to name a few of the most prominent. Yet
they remain isolated voices, in what seems a sea of indifference and incomprehension.
They should not, I hope, be isolated as merely American voices. The search for a greater
voice within the institutions of the United States should be a task for our wider identity,
not just for the repetition of national divisions.

What is to be done? Publish and speak in the United States, no matter where you are
from.

An association

Perhaps the clearest sign of our décalage with respect to globalization is the extent to
which Translation Studies remains organized along national lines. Our academic
discipline has generally ridden on the back of translator-training institutions, either
directly or indirectly, and those institutions mostly operate within national education
systems. Even beyond the concerns of translator training, however, the political
organization of Translation Studies has largely been oriented along national lines. The
Canadian Association of Translation Studies might be an example of this, as could
similar associations in the United States, Brazil and Japan (for interpreting). There are
also associations that run across national boundaries, as in the European Society for
Translation Studies and the Iberian association that brings together Spain and Portugal.
But why should all these associations have remained geopolitically national or regional?
One could argue that the problems of translation are fundamentally different in
different geopolitical contexts. The official bilingualism of Canada creates a highly
specific field that wholly justifies a certain approach to translation, along with a certain
restriction to French and English. In Europe, the future of translation is undoubtedly
marked by the language practices (there is no communication policy) of the European
Union, which creates a series of quite different problems. The justification for the
Iberian association is a little harder to fathom, although it might legitimately spring
from a sense of being excluded by other European discourses on translation. The
education systems are still organized along national lines; national governments still
have language and communication policies that we might be able to inform; there are
still national and regional subsidies to apply for. There is thus still a level at which
certain translation problems, particularly with respect to professional status, require a
nationally based approach. If one looks hard enough, one can find reasons for a certain
political organization along geo-political lines. Indeed, I would personally like to see
more work along more local lines, with what anthropologists call local knowledge, and
a little less adulation of the international stars of Translation Studies
On the other hand, despite those very good reasons for organizing Translation
Studies on a regional basis, the actual studies produced tend not to reflect any particular
geopolitical bias. Publications like Meta, TTR, or Target are different not because of
where they are printed but because of the academic preferences of individuals. Some
journals want to be closer to practice, others more empirical, and still others cherish the
legacy of linguistics. The same authors tend to appear in all; much the same
methodologies are used, regardless of the regional context. No matter how much the
actual problems of translation might depend on national contexts, the problems of
Translation Studies would seem to be rather more global.

This is as it should be. As professional associations, we tend to come together not
because we are similar in any iconic or legalistic way (with regard to race, language,
citizenship or whatever) but precisely because we are of diverse provenance, each
bringing different expertise and experience with regard to languages, cultures, and
research methodologies. That is what intercultures are all about. We need those
differences not just because of our declared status as an interdiscipline but more
especially by virtue of the nature of translation itself, which assumes knowledge of a
cultural other. As an academic discipline, we are given to straddling cultural borders,
engaging our dialogues beyond the national, constructing our own particular forms
interculturality. Further, thanks to our academic non-conformity with globalization,
those general principles have no reason to be restricted to the centers of production. Our
intercultures could and should embrace interested scholars from all cultures, no matter
how small or far-flung, or rather, particularly from those that work in minority
situations and struggle against geophysical distance. For those reasons, our professional
associations should be operating at a global level, in addition to the work they do at the
national and regional levels.

There is no excuse for the absence of a truly international association of Translation
Studies. This could be achieved either by federating the existing national and regional
associations or, more laboriously and divisively, by starting a new association to which
individuals can subscribe directly.

What is to be done? Found a viable international association.

A boycott

Here is another political act that worries me. I am asked to sign a petition calling for the
boycott of “research and cultural” links with citizens of a particular country. That
country has acted illegally, inhumanely, atrociously, as far as I can tell. So too has the
country I was born in. And even worse is the colonial record of the country whose
passport I now carry. The petition asks me to identify researchers and artists with the
state they work within. To act politically would be to make this identification, in the
hope that they will then pressure that state from within, or something like that.
Unfortunately, not signing the petition is denied status as a political act; no one has
invited me to sign a document expressing solidarity with all those who condemn their
state’s actions. This one-sidedness is the first reason for considering the act a problem.
How many alternatives does the political act give us?

Here is yet another political act that worries me. The editor of the journal The
Translator has dismissed members from the editorial board because of the country their
universities are in, using the same general reasoning as above. In this case, though, the
one-sidedness is not as much a problem, since there has been much discussion of the act
within Translation Studies.

Here we see that the national principle can be used not only to organize Translation
Studies, as has so far been the case in our organizations, but also to exclude some
translation scholars (indeed, to boycott a peace activist). This is nationalism in reverse,
escalated to strict totalitarianism (the nation-state is everything). It runs counter to the
interests of Translation Studies on almost every level imaginable. It divides the
international research community; it does so with respect to issues that do not concern
translation; it cannot lead to any increased cooperation between cultures.
Such historical tests are nevertheless instructive. They sometimes allow us to
discover the principles that we did not know we had. The almost general rejection of
that nationalist exclusion should be seen as a reaction not just against something that is
felt to be wrong, but as an affirmation of what is instinctively right: the international
community of scholars working together to solve the problems of their field. Thus
might we have discovered that our professional relations are more important than our
passports or personal opinions about foreign states. We should have found that the
interdiscipline requires dialogue across real difference, rather than the imposition of
political certitude. In short, we should be led to some kind of untheorized awareness of
our status as an interculture, as a community that operates beyond the primary
allegiances of birthright, employment, or party politics.

To be sure, awareness of those fundamental principles has been obscured by the
inept way in which this debate was initiated, with arguments fit more for the glassyeyed
convictions of an English pub. The issue, for me, was long clouded by barrages of
insulting email from various pressure groups, demonstrating the power of manipulated
opinion. It has more recently been complicated by occasional insults being thrown at the
intellectual community for its failure to support the boycott. The disparaging tone of
those asides indicates not only real and justified despair, but a severe misunderstanding
of how an intercultural community of scholars works. In the western tradition, our
interculturality dates at least from the mobile intellectuals of the twelfth century, when
study already required a year abroad and Latin enabled communication between ideas of
very different provenance. That tradition borrowed from the Islamic system of colleges,
dating from the eighth century; it has consistently survived attempts to locate
intellectuals at national courts or to have universities work exclusively for nation states.
Our academic distance has been very hard-won in political terms. Our institutions are
considerably older and wider than most nation states. They will certainly outlive the
outrageous injustices of our day. They are not easily dismissed. Their own particular
interculturality is worth preserving.

That kind of intellectual community carries the weight of history, if nothing else.
Thanks to its principles, there can be no excuse for the collective exclusion of scholars
simply by virtue of their national affiliation. Further, there are good arguments,
embedded in the very nature of an intercultural community of scholars, for collectively
excluding those who seek to impose such measures.

Our own globalization requires at least that ethical stance. There is a final irony,
however, in the more recent avatar of the debate. Those who would apply an exclusive
nationalism are now, in a classical fuite en avant, initiating moves for an International
Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies. Their model would be based on
individual membership, effectively setting up a structure parallel to the existing national
and regional associations. What becomes of that initiative remains to be seen. It
certainly aims to fill a very real gap, encouraging Translation Studies in countries where
the discipline is incipient or still weak. However, there are various ways of building
Babel, and nationalist exclusion is not the best of them, not even when concealed within
a very necessary gesture to global inclusion.

At the Halifax conference I proposed that our politics required our own
institutionalized globalization, and that the alternatives should be explored. The neatest
solution would be for the existing associations and societies to join, en bloc, the
incipient international association. Failing that, one should test the possibilities of a
federation, along the lines of the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs or the
International Comparative Literature Association. Or we could do nothing, and let
people vote with their subscription dues. Any action should, however, embrace an
inclusive globalization of our intellectual efforts, if indeed we can formulate the
principles worth defending.

References

Ganne, Valérie, and Marc Minon (1992): “Géographies de la traduction”, Françoise
Barret-Ducrocq, ed., Traduire l’Europe, Paris, Payot, pp. 55-95.
Gouadec, Daniel (2002): Profession: Traducteur. Paris: La Maison du Dictionnaire.
Lambert, José (1989): “La traduction, les langues et la communication de masse. Les
ambiguïtés du discours international”, Target1(2), pp. 215-237.
Pym, Anthony (2000a): Negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in
Hispanic History, Manchester, St Jerome Publishing.
Pym, Anthony (2000b): “On Cooperation”, Intercultural Faultlines: Research Models
in Translation Studies I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, Maeve Olohan, ed.
Manchester, St Jerome Publishing, pp. 181-192
Ricardo, David (1821): On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, third
edition (first published 1817), London, John Murray.
Venuti, Lawrence (1995): The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation,
London and New York, Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence (1998): The Scandals of Translation, London and New York,
Routledge.

Glossary of terms used by translators and interpreters

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A language

The interpreter’s dominant language, into which he or she is competent to interpret professionally. Usually, but not always, this is the interpreter’s native language.

Accreditation

A formal process for evaluating the competence of a translator, which may include examinations, a review of education and experience, etc., conducted by a professional association, such as the American Translators Association.

Accredited translator

A translator who has received accreditation from a professional association, such as the American Translators Association.

Acoustic insulation

A measure of the amount of noise transmitted from a conference room to an interpretation booth, from an interpretation booth to a conference room, and from one interpretation booth to another adjacent booth.

The difference in sound pressure levels between an interpretation booth and the room where it is set up, or between two adjacent booths. The sound pressure levels are measured in octave bands, both in the booths and the room.

Active languages

(1) The language or languages into which an interpreter is competent to interpret professionally.

(2) The term is also used in meetings & conventions to mean the target languages into which interpreting is provided. For example, in a convention where all presentations are to be given in English and interpretation is provided into Spanish, French, and Russian, these three would be the active languages, while English would be the passive language.

Advertising translator

Although there are translators and companies that specialize in translating advertisements, the practice is not recommended. Advertising should not be translated, but rather adapted to the target language.

Audience

Strictly speaking, in a meeting or convention, it refers to the listeners, or end users of an interpretation. However, it is commonly also used to refer to the readership, or end users, of a translation.

Audiovisual company

A company that provides audiovisual equipment for meetings, conventions, and special events. Some of these companies may also rent interpretation equipment as a sideline. Since their main business is not interpretation, they neither have the expertise required to design the best simultaneous interpretation configuration, nor the best equipment for every job.

B language

Language other than the interpreter's dominant language, in which he or she has native language competence and into which he or she is competent to interpret professionally. An interpreter may have one or more B languages.

Back translation

A translation of a translation. It is a common misconception that the quality of a translation can be judged by having a second translator translate a translated text back into its source language. In fact, the opposite is true; the worse the translation, the closer the back translation will adhere to the original. The reason for this is that a bad translation normally follows very closely the wording of the original, but not the meaning. The best examples of this are the word-for-word translations produced by the different online machine translation tools, such as Babel Fish.

Background information

Documentation relating to the subject matter of the source text for a translation (articles, books, manuals, etc. written on the subject), or the topic of discussion for an interpretation (copies of speeches from previous or similar conferences, etc.) Translators and interpreters need to make use of a great deal of background information in order to produce acceptable work.

Bid

The translation of a bid is a complex process and must be managed as a multipart translation. Bids are typically made up of a technical bid (which requires a technical translator), a financial bid (financial translator), as well as a contract and pertinent legislation (legal translator).

Booth

Interpretation booths are divided into fixed, which are built into some conference rooms, and mobile, which are set up and dismantled wherever needed, typically in hotels and convention centers. There can be huge differences in the quality of mobile booths. While some companies do have booths that comply with ISO 4043, often what passes for a booth is nothing more than a flimsy shield that affords almost no sound insulation.

Broker

A translation or interpretation broker is a person that is not a qualified translator or interpreter and acts as middleman between freelancers, interpretation equipment companies, and clients. Usually, they "source out" freelance translators and interpreters from the many online directories and pay bottom dollar for their services, while charging the client as much as, or more than, a reputable translation company would.

C language

The source languages from which an interpreter is competent to interpret professionally. Interpreters may have several C languages.

Certified court interpreter

A person who has passed an examination to assess competency to interpret during court proceedings. In the US, although the requirements for certification of court interpreters vary according to the jurisdiction, they generally do not demand a high level of competence.

Not to be confused with a legal interpreter, who is a highly qualified simultaneous interpreter with knowledge of comparative law and the legal systems of civil law countries and common law countries.

See also Federally Certified Court Interpreters.

Certified interpreter

In the US, there is no national interpreter certification program (other than for Federally Certified Court Interpreters), although various agencies attempt certification procedures, with varying degrees of success.

Certified translation

In the US, a certified translation is one where the translator has signed an oath before a notary public certifying the accuracy and correctness of the translation, as well as the fact that he is qualified to make such a certification.

Since in the US, there are no restrictions as to who can or cannot be a translator, anyone willing to swear that he or she is qualified to translate into and from a language pair can certify a translation.

Certified translator

There is no such thing, contrary to the claims made by countless "certified translators" who advertise on the web and the yellow pages, as there is no official certification program for translators in the US. Next time someone claims to be a "certified translator," ask who certified him.

Civil law countries

Countries where all law is created by the enactment of legislatures, as opposed to England and the United States (common law countries), where case law and precedents are an integral part of the legal system.

It takes a highly skilled legal translator to translate legal documents from a civil law country into the language of a common law country and vice versa, since many of the legal concepts do not have exact parallels.

Common law countries

England and the United States, where case law and precedents are an integral part of the legal system, as opposed to civil law countries.

It takes a highly skilled legal translator to translate legal documents from a civil law country into the language of a common law country and vice versa, since many of the legal concepts do not have exact parallels.

Computer Translation

Another term for machine translation. For more on this topic, see How Well Does Computer Translation Work?

Computer-aided translation

Another term for computer-assisted translation.

Computer-assisted translation

Translation using software that manages dictionaries and user-defined glossaries. When the program encounters previously translated words and phrases, it suggests a translation and the translator decides whether to accept or reject it.

Conference interpretation

Interpretation (oral translation of a speech) during a conference or convention. Although most conference interpretation is simultaneous interpretation, the two terms are not synonymous. Sometimes conferences may also involve consecutive interpretation.

Conference interpreter

An interpreter trained, knowledgeable, and experienced in conference interpretation.

Conference translator

A person who translates written text intended for use during a conference, or generated during a conference (such as conference proceedings, etc.) Sometimes the term is erroneously applied to a conference interpreter.

Confidentiality

For translators and interpreters, professional confidentiality is absolute. It goes into effect the moment the translator or interpreter is given access to the client's information and remains in effect until his or her death. It applies in all cases, with no exceptions. Some countries have laws granting client-translator and client-interpreter confidentiality the same status as is enjoyed by physicians and lawyers.

Consecutive interpretation

Oral translation of speech into another language, after the speaker speaks. The interpreter takes notes while the speaker talks and then delivers the interpretation while the speaker is silent. No equipment is used. Often used in business meetings, negotiations, and press conferences.

Consecutive interpreter

An interpreter who listens while the speaker speaks and then interprets while the speaker pauses. The interpreter providing consecutive interpretation sits, either at the same table as the speaker, or at separate table, and speaks, either into the same microphone, or a separate microphone, so that everyone in the room can hear. The interpreter may take notes while he or she listens.

Consecutive interpreting

The process of orally translating speech into another language, after the speaker speaks. The interpreter listens and takes notes while the speaker talks and then delivers the interpretation while the speaker is silent. No equipment is used. Often used in business meetings, negotiations, and press conferences.

Content

Language conveys meaning through both, form and content, and they must both be transferred into parallel and equivalent language in order to produce a translation.

Convention interpreter

A term sometimes erroneously used to refer to conference interpreters. One of the Red Flags & Warning Bells that your supplier is not as knowledgeable as he ought to be.

Convention translator

A term sometimes erroneously used to refer to conference translators, or even conference interpreters. One of the Red Flags & Warning Bells that your supplier is not as knowledgeable as he ought to be.

Court interpretation

The process of providing interpretation in a court setting or during court-related proceedings, such as depositions.

Court interpreter

Interpreter who provides interpretation in a court setting or during court-related proceedings, such as depositions. Court interpreters usually work for county, state, and federal courts, but may also work for attorneys.

Not to be confused with legal interpreters, who typically provide interpretation for continuing legal education and bar association conferences, and have a much higher level of competence.

Negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History

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by Anthony Pym (© Anthony Pym 1999)

Anthony Pym is author of Translation and Text Transfer (1992), Epistemological Problems in Translation and its Teaching (1993), Pour une éthique du traducteur (1997), and Method in Translation History (1998). He also edits the series Translation Theories Explained and Translation Practices Explained, published by St. Jerome.

Introduction:

Translators, Intercultures, and Hispanic Frontier Society

Clashes and overlaps of cultures have produced many strange and wonderful things in the Hispanic world. Our stories here will include a Latin Qur’an addressed to readers with no Latin, a defence of Aristotle translations by a critic who knew no Greek, the use of children to bring down an entire civilization, speculation on why Columbus’s statue in Barcelona is pointing straight to Israel, as well as sundry observations on the gold, paper, hides, coins, coffee beans, conquering armies, priests, and poets that moved from culture to culture. Our case studies will go from the twelfth-century Christian, Islamic, and Jewish exchanges right through to the not unrelated complexity of training today’s translators in Spain, mining a history rich in both anecdote and lesson. One could probably just tell the stories and trust their entertainment value to carry all else. Yet amusement is not our only purpose here. These studies also seek to address issues of a more general nature, beyond the concerns of diversion or even of historical representativity.

At its loftiest level, our motivating question is how cultures should interrelate. It is no doubt a pretentious question; it certainly asks about rather more than the past of Hispanic cultures. In fact, the question more directly concerns our own age of moving geographical and professional borders, the ones that are fought over not particularly due to economic imbalances but because of the conflicting ways people seek to belong together. The question strictly concerns cultures as cultures; it is wider than the politics of states or nations. And it is undoubtedly ethical in ambition, requiring a speculative mode of thought and at least two cultures to think about. Further, any applicable or liveable answer to that question must work through models of how cultures have actually interrelated; any substantial ethical answer requires at least some historical knowledge. This means entering the decidedly imperfect world of complex social interactions and generally asymmetric power relations; we must leave behind the platitudinous ideals of non-intervention, necessary progress, or retribution. If we are doing history, it is because we do not yet know how to answer our fundamental question.

What is perhaps most surprising about our question is how little can really be said to answer it. The accumulated methodologies and findings of anthropology, sociology, and comparative cultural studies offer remarkably little consent about the ways cultures can interrelate, about the ways they have historically interrelated, about the ethics of such processes, nor even about what cultures are in the first place. There is no ready framework. In the absence of established guidelines, the purpose of this book must be to reflect on these problems as directly as possible, close to the material, to see how history might help answer our question.

How this will be attempted, and the basic terms and concepts involved, may warrant brief explanation.

Why Translators?

Although frequently sidelined as a technical problem of interest only to linguists, the activity of translators should be a privileged field for the problem of how cultures interrelate. The simple fact of translation presupposes contact between at least two cultures, and does so in relation to language, the social activity that perhaps most effectively and insidiously weaves complex relations of cultural identity. To look at translation is immediately to be engaged in issues of how cultures interrelate. Yet idealized translation, minimally understood as a mapping problem involving two texts, is an inadequate and even deceptive object of study. Its blinding-spot lies in the way, in presupposing relations between at least two cultures, it surreptitiously excludes the space where the contacts are made and manipulated. Paradoxically, translation eclipses or at best misrepresents the place of the translator, and thereby all mediation.

This exclusion is discursively operative in utterances such as ‘I am translating,’ where the first person cannot possibly belong to a translating translator. Even when taken as an ideal relation between texts and thus perhaps between cultures, translation actively covers over the subjective conditions of its own production. Of course, this is by no means true of all actual translations, nor of all ways of reading translations. Yet a narrow focus on idealized translation nevertheless incurs the constant risk of simplifying the space in which our ethics and history might be elaborated. The conceptual task of our research, in this regard, must thus be to go from translation to something slightly more human, something a little more active. We must seek the place of translators and their kind.

Although the conceptual shift from translation to translators may seem rather trivial, it changes almost everything. If we force ourselves to think, from the outset, that relations are not directly between one culture and another, and that translators, as intermediaries, also have a space to live in and an active role to play, we are obliged to ask questions that reconfigure the terms of reference.

First, where are these intermediaries? Since no abstract argument can happily situate them in one culture or the other, we must admit the working hypothesis that translators operate from the intersections or overlaps of cultures, in what we shall call ‘intercultural’ space. This space is to be distinguished from relations or transfers that go from one monoculture to another, which are better labeled ‘cross-cultural.’

Second, we might ask across what translators actually translate. The answer is deceptively simple: translators work across the boundaries between languages or between cultures (the difference is not yet germane to our concerns). If there were no such boundaries, there would be no translators. Yet history complicates the matter. For one thing, we have just hypothesized the existence of intercultural space, which must somehow be sitting on or inside the borders. What conceptual geometry can comfortably configure that space or populate it with intermediaries? For another, the borders, lines of reference, are in constant movement themselves. For instance, the exact limits of ‘Spain’ or the adjective ‘Spanish’ depend very much on the period in question and the inclinations of the historian. The lines move, and many of those movements are partly due to whatever happens in intercultural space, where the cultural status of borders may be both created and displaced. In fact, since close inspection shows gradations blending the frontier regions of almost all languages and cultures, it may well be that there are no lines of cultural demarcation except as defined in intercultural space. If there were no translations, would there be definable boundaries between languages?

Our third question is also deceptively simple: How do translators live, beyond the fact of having their names associated with translations? Here even the most superficial historical scratching shows that translators frequently do far more than translate. They are also people, with multiple aims, loyalties, and activities that may include anything from gazing at the stars to investing in the international wool trade (we will be meeting cases of both). When one considers the range of those related activities, often associated with specific professional networks or ethnic groups, it becomes reasonable to ask to what extent the associated social relations weave a sense of intercultural identity, be it real or imagined. That is, in each historical context there is conceivably a range of professions associated with the role of the mediating person; there are networks not only connecting culture with culture but also interlinking the various intermediaries themselves. Translators need not be central figures in such groups; the problematic of translators may still allow us to investigate the general features of all intermediaries. We might thus find specific groups or communities where most members are aware of being cultural intermediaries and interrelate on the basis of that understanding. Such groups might be very small, as was the case of the translators, technical writers, and astronomers working for Alfonso X in the thirteenth century. The groups could be diffusely extensive, as might be presumed for the intellectual and mercantile sectors of Hispanic Jewish communities, both before and after expulsion. Whatever the dimensions, the identities of such groups may provide ballast for recognizable patterns of activity, for something like a small highly professionalized ‘culture’ in itself, or better, for something that might even become a culture were it not necessarily based on cross-cultural transfers. The things that such intermediaries have in common would then make up what we shall call an ‘interculture,’ about which there is more to be said.

What is an Interculture?

These lines of questioning quickly create problems for any immediate response to our ethical problem. Indeed, there is a very real danger of carrying the questions too far. For the kind of theory that does no more than theorize, it would be facile to conclude that since there are no ontological boundaries, all linguistic work is translational and all cultures are actually intercultures. The argument is possible, even plausible. In historical terms, we might freely concede that all languages are formed from translation, and that all cultures come from intercultures, loosely defined. Yet if translation and intercultures were thus always everywhere, we could no longer formulate our fundamental question about relations between cultures in anything like radical terms. If we do want to ask that question, and if we do not presume to already know the answer, we are obliged to insist on a few operative restrictions on our notions of cultures and intercultures. This is perhaps best explained through an example.

The first half of this book was written in a village called Calaceite in Spanish, Calaceit in the Catalan spoken there. Movements between Calaceite and Calaceit are performed in the village all the time, from one street corner to another, one social class to another, one side of a secretly remembered Civil War to another, and on periodically defaced and refaced roadsigns, since the village is in a part of the franja or ‘fringe’ of Aragon settled by speakers of Catalan. This is a diglossic border community, located within any line that would separate Catalan from Castilian (the name we shall be using for what others term the Spanish language). Within that line there is even a sense of identity expressed in the non-names for the local language, which is syntactically a variety of Catalan but is depreciatively referred to as xaporiao (‘patois’ or even ‘slapped together’) or ‘what we speak’ (‘Ja parles com nosaltres’, they say. ‘So you now speak like us.’). The variety within the border has no name; it might be a candidate for intercultural status.

This village certainly has a border status, mixed languages, and a corresponding sense of unnamed identity. It is certainly quaint. But does it have any professional intermediaries? Does its livlihood actually depend on cross-cultural transfers? Could it usefully be called an interculture simply because of the border?

Those three questions must be answered in the negative. Although people in this village are certainly moving between languages on a daily basis, everyone understands both languages well enough to obviate any developed need for remunerated intermediaries. There are no professional intermediaries as such. No one is engaged to produce a discourse where the first person of ‘I am from here’ does not refer to the producer of the utterance. Nor is there any evidence that the village produces translators, no matter how metaphorically we take the term, simply because of its border status. It is an agricultural community; its olives, almonds and wine are sold in whatever language the buyer wants. To be sure, it has its separatists, who believe that authentic language and culture is on the Catalan side of the border; it has its regionalists, who identify more with the traditions of Aragon; and it has its nationalists, who call themselves Spanish. Yet there is nothing in this mix that particularly needs the name ‘interculture.’ More to the point, if the village were an interculture, most of the villages, towns and cities of Spain would have to be called intercultural as well, with various weightings of the same picturesque hybridity. True, this might usefully remind English-language readers that the world’s societies are generally multilingual and subject to cultural overlapping. But the scope of our term ‘interculture’ would quickly become too powerful to answer our specific question.

If interculturality is to be used in a usefully restrictive way, it requires at least two definitional constraints. First, it must be related to some professional status. It must refer to groups of people who, for reasons of institutionalized livelihood, are somehow engaged in the transfer of cultural products across borders. At this most general level, interculturality would thus be found underlying a vast array of professionals, from what our now called relocation and multilingual text managers through to the language workers associated with multinational scientific research, perhaps with various mercenary armies, spies, most obviously the social paraphernalia of direct and indirect diplomacy. Interculturality would be what is common to the people who transfer knowledge, entertainment, security, and their opposites, across what are recognized as lines between cultures. Further, these people are minimally professional in that they exchange their services for material or social value, be it gold, prestige, or the saving of souls.

Our second restrictive criterion is that this interculturality should be derivative or dependent on some apparently more primary cultural division. An interculture must have what Peirce might have called ‘secondness.’ The work of our professionals is thus only intercultural because it assumes there is a line to be crossed, and that something is to go from one culture to another. As soon as the line between cultures becomes non-operative, as soon as there is no functional barrier to overcome, interculturality loses its derivative status and becomes indistinguishable from general cultural practice.

Let this suffice the purposes of bare definition: for us, interculturality requires professionalism and secondness. Beyond that, there remain many hypotheses to be tested, particularly as concerns the paradoxical ways the diversity of individual provenance reinforces the professional identity of the intercultural group, or the way agent-principal relations loosen as the group develops its own networks, or even the way specialized communication technology accrues effective power to the interculture. But for the moment, our two loose criteria should be enough to save the term ‘intercultural’ from hapless dispersion. It should also help steer our thoughts away from any universalist common base shared by different cultures, such as one occasionally finds in descriptions of the three coexisting religions of medieval Hispania. Interculturality describes the quality of intersectional spaces in which professionals work on transfers between cultures. It is neither a universalist nor a relativist notion. The rest remains to be unearthed.

Intercultures and Frontier Society

Let us return to our village. The name of the place is actually neither Catalan nor Castilian; it derives from the Arabic Kalat-Zeyd, ‘the castle of Saïd.’ Not that much is known about Saïd. Translations to and from Arabic belonged to the Christian conquest and colonization in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when things went backward and forward for a century or so. The area around the village was part of the long border between the Christian and Islamic worlds. It was very much a frontier region, with a sense and a set of consequences that have since been lost. This means that, even though the area is not now intercultural in any sense that particularly interests us, it might once have been. In fact, it could have been an intercultural space of a rather engaging kind.

How might the specificity of a frontier society change the way we think about translators? Consider, briefly, some of the sociological features of the frontier between Islam and Christendom in twelfth-century Hispania (cf. Ruiz de la Peña 1983, García de Cortázar 1983, Bartlett 1989, Ledesma 1993).

Once the battles had been won, the land had to be settled. Christians were given incentives to move into the new spaces, effectively as colonizers. Criminals often chose the path of colonization because they could officially have all their crimes absolved; no questions were asked about the marital status of women; a new life was offered to all settlers, especially those who were tough and presumably belligerent enough to keep fighting for the lands they were granted. Settlement thus gave rise to frontier towns that were relatively unstructured in terms of feudal relationships between lord and vassal, since the settlers were given the right to raise livestock and cultivate land more or less for themselves. Frontier society was also militarized, effectively dominated by the warrior on horseback, then by the warrior ‘monks’ of the military orders. Economic activity in the frontier town was based on agriculture and incursions into Muslim territory. Yet there was an acute shortage of agricultural labour, requiring serious efforts to have Muslims stay in Christian lands. This brought about prolonged contact with the ‘half-way’ social groups known as Mudejars (Muslims living under Christian rule) and Moriscos (Muslims who had adopted Christianity). For similar reasons, there were few highly developed trading or artisan activities among the settlers. Yet trade across borders could be a major source of wealth, so measures were also taken to encourage the presence and continuity of Jewish communities, many of which moved into Christian lands to escape the less tolerant society of the Almohades. The result was a multicultural and multi-ethnic urban structure within a militarized society. That kind of society, more than the calm hybridity of contemporary Calaceit(e), was eminently suited to the development of intercultures.

The intercultural activity associated with trade did not necessarily involve any cultural mixing. The laws of all of the main cultural or ethnic groups—Christians, Muslims and Jews—were kept separate to at least some degree. Even within Christian communities, the regulations and punishments for settler Christians were significantly more liberal than those applied to foreign Christians. The function of the monarchy was not so much to impose a common law as it was to protect the rights of each individual group. Power was thus significantly fragmented. Within the Christian structure, there were constant trade-offs between the monarch, a few lay nobles, and the church, particularly the Clunaic order, which played a significant role in the organization of the conquest. Toward the end of the twelfth century the colonization process was more actively controlled by religious militia including the Knights Templar and the order of Calatrava, the latter becoming the masters of Calaceit(e) and much else as well.

This, then, was the kind of fragmented social structure that could house intercultural activities of a professionalized and secondary status. The transfers it propitiated were not only those associated with the Toledan translators of the twelfth century but also those of the many other translators working in other parts of Hispania, at least through to the sixteenth century, when we shall find a Jewish rabbi translating the bible for the order of Calatrava. This was also the remarkably open and rough social structure that welcomed the many foreigners who actually carried out translations. Hispanic frontier society was not an interculture in itself; it was a loose social structure that facilitated intercultural activity.

Considering all these factors, the surprising thing is perhaps that such a frontier society apparently generally held together for so long. Admittedly, numerous local variants must be allowed for. Toledo was very exceptional in that it had a substantial community of Mozarabs (Christians who had lived under Islamic rule). Yet there was general coexistence for over a century. And the reason is fairly clear. Multicultural and as fragmentary as you like, all the diverse social elements were united in their common opposition to the space, be it experienced or imagined, on the Islamic side of the frontier. Only when the border moved further away, when the region was no longer properly defined by the border, did the bonds between the groups unravel, tensions were unleashed, and some kind of monoculture ensued form the various struggles. The Spain of the great expulsions and the Inquisition could only be triumphant once the frontier had moved outward.

What does this have to do with cultural intermediaries, or with their variants regulated as translators? Just think of all the box-and-arrow diagrams that assume the existence of ‘culture A’ and ‘culture B,’ or ‘source language’ and ‘target language,’ all conveniently represented as separate entities in their own spaces, usually with a translator located one side or the other, in a nice homogeneous space. If we believed the diagrams, translation would logically be a fact of sedentary cultures, of situations where borders are stable and things stay in place for a long time. The translator, it seems, is mostly seated at some kind of table, looking at two or several texts separated on an empty and meaningless desktop, engaged in an activity defined by the symmetry of two separate sides. Translation also appears to require time, calm, stable knowledge, and patrons who have the resources and foresight to ensure such conditions. Translation might be expected to belong to periods of peace and political stability. It should have little to do with frontier society.

But what happens when translation does take place in frontier society? Where are the separate spaces? What side is the translator on? How should a diagram represent a translation project that brings together two or three or four redactors, all from different cultural groups? More important, what should we say if translative activity was richer and more intense in Hispanic frontier situations than in any relatively homogeneous Spanish culture? One might imagine there was something wrong in the way we currently think about translation.

Our case studies here will show that many cultural intermediaries were indeed active in frontier societies, in situations of great turbulence and political unrest. After all, why should translators not be stimulated by a mix of cultures, by intense trade, rapid transfers of wealth, the proximity of war, of conflict, of the languages of action? A frontier town, be it Toledo or Calaceit(e), could benefit greatly from its position of apparent peril, from the fluidity of its social relationships, from the relative freedom allowed by fragmentary power structures. Part of the benefit could be properly cultural.

The studies in this book generally see the context for intercultural activity as being a frontier society of one kind or another. This involves not just the opposition between Islam and Christianity, where the model is fairly clear, but also the more abstract borders of the history that followed. Our general model can thus offer a perspective on translative relations between such things as medieval scholasticism and Italian humanism, between church and empire at the beginning of Hispanic colonialism, or between Castilian nationalism and international modernism. The frontier model can be taken well beyond its initial historical location. It no doubt gains a certain metaphorical status in the process, yet this need not diminish its explanatory power. Even in our own day, when the borders have moved to the multicultural city and to the links and non-links of the internet, the fluidity of frontier society remains a stimulating model for thought about how cultures should interrelate.

Negotiating Frontiers

We are gradually building up a model where translation takes place alongside related modes of professional mediation. These are all potentially parts of intercultures, which in turn may be framed by the loose structures of frontier society. This is the broad scheme that structures what we shall be looking for in our case studies. Yet that model in itself does little to answer our fundamental question about how cultures interrelate.

The notion of the frontier society limits the kinds of relations we shall be looking at. Most of our translators are far from the ideal of the ‘mediating person,’ understood as someone who would suffer derision and self-sacrifice in order helpfully to build bridges between cultures (cf. Bochner 1981). Our selected intermediaries have remarkably few of the nurturing virtues implied by such a vision; they are rarely motivated by altruism; or better, there is no reason to assume such motivation on a systematic basis. Frontier society was moved by converging and conflicting self-interests. Perhaps significantly, there are virtually no women among our translators, although the significance of the fact may belong not just to subjective limitations (we have not set out to counter gender bias) but also to historical practices of exclusion associated with the tasks we are considering. For better or for worse, our intermediaries are men; they mostly belong to male-dominated professional groups; they tend to mediate in the interests of themselves or their groups.

As we have noted, intermediaries exchange their services for material or social value. We can actually trace the gold or the favours with which intercultures were rewarded. Such exchange means that most intermediaries act to some degree as agents for power groups whose location is not necessarily intercultural. They are thus technically in a relation between agent and principal; intermediaries work for non-intermediaries. When the abbot of Cluny ordered a Latin Qur’an, or Alfonso X ordered his Jewish advisers to translate astrological treatises, they did so as effective non-intermediaries, without knowledge of Arabic, and thus with only indirect means of controlling the services they received. Intermediary agents who appear to be ‘acting on behalf of’ may thus in fact be ‘acting in dialogue with,’ or even, if the adages about translators are to be believed, ‘betraying.’ In theory, the more specialized the interculture, the greater the effective decision-making power that may be shifted to the intermediary.

However, this neo-functionalist view is of more importance for the intercultures of our own age than it was for Hispanic frontier society. In the specific fields that concern us here, effective power is more consistently directed by the better defined social groups—mostly patrons and classes of readers—that impinge on frontier society. Translation must thus be seen as a process highly conditioned by the way these quite particular principles interact. And it is those interactions that then define the borders at the centre of the intercultural groups.

The neo-classical view adopted here will be that these power groups work together to attain some kind of mutual benefit. This may involve interaction with institutions like church and crown, with particular grandees who commission translations, or indeed with intercultural groups located in other countries, as shall be envisaged for the transfer of fifteenth-century humanism. These major players, the social groups with interests in cross-cultural transfers, are presumed to be able to reach understandings about what translation is and how it should be carried out. They have many differences, but they also have benefits to gain from cooperation and exchange. They thus negotiate—in some cases working through translators as negotiators—to organize those differences. They agree on some things, disagree on others, and may agree to disagree on still further points.

For example, in the twelfth century there was disagreement between religious and protoscientific thinkers about the truth held in non-Christian texts. However, this discord was considered less important than the overriding agreement that Christendom would benefit from translations of those texts, either so that Muslims could learn the error of their ways (for church ideologues like Petrus Venerabilis) or so that Europeans could recover the practical science of the classical past (for empiricists like Adelardus de Bada). So there was agreement on the most important principle (practical benefit to the target culture), some kind of agreement to disagree on a fundamental background principle (the authoritative value of pagan texts), and repressed disagreement on what were considered minor points such as the value of eloquent Latin. The translators worked accordingly, with the church actually financing protoscientific translations with which it could not have fully subscribed.

The strategies of mediation can thus be seen as the outcome of negotiations. Without going into details (for which see Pym 1992, 1995, 1997, 1998), we are borrowing the general cooperation model of neo-classical negotiation theory and using it to organize data in quite a different field. The central idea is simple and well known: mutual benefits can ensue from situations where all actors operate out of self-interest. This does not imply that mutual benefits are always attained, nor that the social iniquities and material causes of history can be overlooked. Yet it does assume that the main power players were rational in their own terms, an assumption that in our case is partly supported by the fact that the groups tend to be within Hispanic culture or at least in touch with similar value systems.

The negotiation model might well turn out to carry so many presuppositions as to be non-enlightening in many cases. Yet here it is used as a convenient way of thinking through the problems of cross-cultural relations without accepting any timeless separation of cultures. The idea of negotiation certainly should not be taken as a rigid schema with slots that have to be filled in the same way with each application; it cannot give us fixed locations for the groups with conflicting interests in translation processes. Sometimes they are rivals with in the same geopolitical space, as is the case of church and crown; sometimes they are in different but interrelated spaces, as might be the situation with the movement of Renaissance humanism from the Italian peninsula to Hispania. Further, the negotiation model cannot happily locate ‘the’ intermediary in one exclusive slot. Sometimes we find intermediaries actually doing the negotiating, coming up with solutions acceptable to conflicting interests (this might be the case of Rabbi Mose Arragel translating the Hebrew Bible for Christians, in chapter five); sometimes the intermediaries belong to active social groups with interests beyond those of intercultural space (as would be the case of the twelfth-century translators of Islamic science, who were also the people most directly interested in using that science). It is thus with a certain amount of play and leeway that the negotiation model is applied to specific translation situations.

A few words are probably necessary on the principles listed as summaries at the end of some of the chapters. These principles are given in the form of ‘regimes,’ broadly understood here as hierarchical sets of understandings that allow negotiations to proceed. If two social groups agree on some aspects of cross-cultural exchange but disagree on others, their shared regime will ideally have the agreed-upon points at the top, potentially outweighing the points of greater discord down at the bottom. In this way, dialogue can proceed without abolishing difference; major understandings can be attained without homogenizing knowledge.

There must always be doubt as to the historical existence of the principles as they are presented here. No one is suggesting that when people met to talk about translation they first sat down and elaborated lists of things they agreed and disagreed on. Yet historians should seriously consider that, since intercultural history is a long dialogue across and between many cultural groups, some such mode of understanding must have been involved at certain points. Indeed, negotiated understanding may be the kind of model needed in our cross-cultural relations in the present. Regimes would then be little less than one of the ways the past can help answer our fundamental question.

There is nothing simple or automatic about the regimes presented in the following pages. In all cases they have been derived bottom-up, from interaction with the historical material itself. They are the result of repeated questions about what the actors would they have agreed on, what would have been non-negotiable, what concessions were possible, and what mutual benefits were to be gained. In some instances these questions allow the hierarchies of principles to be arranged with relative confidence; in most contexts, however, we find examples and situations that suggest alternative arrangements of principles. This means none of the regimes are stable blocks; all incorporate contradictions; and any regime, falsely isolated by the historian, must be expected to evolve into another. There is always something very artificial about the way historiography has to find summaries for its chapters. Yet it might be hoped that, in peeping in on Hispanic translation history at a series of key points, the principles drawn from the material will fall into regimes with a certain historical continuity. Of little consequence that the summaries fail to match up neatly; they do not really allow any kind of all-embracing overview. In fact, the main lesson they teach may be that the core problems of translation, the areas of significant disagreement, never find lasting solutions. The problems may sink down to the lower levels of regimes in one period (target-language eloquence, for example, was a subject of very limited dispute in the twelfth century) and then reappear as major points of contention in another (target-language eloquence was one of the things that Cartagena and Bruni were arguing about in the fifteenth century). Rather than definitively solve such problems, each age selectively forgets or sidelines whatever is necessary, overlooking some points in order to facilitate agreement on others.

That said, not all the studies undertaken here strictly concern negotiation theory as such. There is also a general interest in the social forces that help configure intercultural space, forces such as the transfer of wealth (gold, in the case of chapter one), changes in communication technologies (paper, in chapter four), the movement of education practices (chapters six and twelve) and migrations of people (missionary priests and intellectual exiles, in chapters seven and eight, and almost throughout). Few of these more material concerns can really be modeled in terms of negotiation, yet all of them share the same basic geometry. In all cases, these studies configure a world where people move, where virtually everything is being displaced, and where the passages of wealth, people, technologies, and prestige not only take place through the overlaps of cultures but also contribute to the fluctuating substance of intercultures. This is indeed the geometry of frontier society. In a sense, the studies of things moving should help set the social scenes where negotiations can then take place.

Our fundamental question, perhaps like all our questions, can be seen as a problem formulated in our own age of globalization then projected back onto the past. The focus on intercultures certainly ensues from the priority of our present, where mobility is inescapable. For this, no apologies are offered. The purpose of doing history is to help address the problems of the present. Indeed, this general aim, to question the past in terms of the present, may explain why the studies here range from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, with huge gaps in between. Only an amateur could allow their interests to become so dispersed. As an amateur, I claim no expertise in any particular domain. I am certainly not interested in presenting exhaustive descriptions of particular themes or periods; the lists of names and dates can be found elsewhere. Here I seek merely to delve into particular cases and to follow the leads, taking some broad ideas and seeing how far they can be developed, what modifications they require, and ultimately, what the past might say about the cultural relations of our present.

Globalization and Segmented Language Services

2005-04-29T06:12:00.001-07:00

By Anthony Pym

© Anthony Pym 2000 Previous version published in Facköversättaren (Göteborg) 10/6 (1999).

Anthony Pym is author of Translation and Text Transfer (1992), Epistemological Problems in Translation and its Teaching (1993), Pour une éthique du traducteur (1997), and Method in Translation History (1998). He also edits the series Translation Theories Explained and Translation Practices Explained, published by St. Jerome.

Globalization is not really global. Only in restricted areas of professional and economic activity is the increase in cross-cultural communication leading to major qualitative changes. International English works in many workplaces, but by no means most of them; it invades our computers, our music, our investments, but not our hearts, our kitchens, our bedrooms. And even in the restricted and sensitive field of language services, globalization is not the only game in town. Or better, its effect is not always globalizing. Instead of making everything the same, the undoubted increase in communications is, I suggest, producing a more segmented market for language services. Let me describe just three of those segments, such as I see them developing and separating around me.

First, at the most numerous bottom end of the market (bottom because numerous), countless poorly paid translation jobs are being carried out by students, recent graduates, friends-of-friends-of-clients, or variously incompetent or indifferent part-timers, who may or may not have university training in the language concerned, as translators or otherwise. Fatally, the remuneration for this broad underclass is usually just enough to keep them studying. People working in this segment tend to conceptualize their task as transferring information from territorial culture to territorial culture, language system to language system, since the effects of any really globalizing profession are as good as invisible. Theirs is a simpler world, in tune with most of the simple models used to teach translation: A to B, and nothing in between.

A second segment would then comprise many contracted literary translators, established freelancers, salaried language professionals in non-technical fields, part-time conference interpreters, bilingual secretaries to middle-management and above, and tenured academic staff, including the ones who teach translation. This reasonably comfortable second group is the kind of professional location for which most teachers feel they should be preparing their students, perhaps because it is the niche of tenured teachers themselves (could anyone hope to go higher?). If asked, most people here would either see themselves as mediating between territorial cultures or, increasingly, as providing services so that readers may understand and participate in specialized fields. That is, the effects of globalized specialization may be recognized, but since the translators are generalists or freelancers who provide services in a number of fields, they would tend not to see themselves as actually being affected or carried away from more primal cultural allegiances. A and B are still separate, and perhaps culturally richer because of it.

Third, there is a growing top-pay demand for highly competent language professionals, often two-way, in fields such as information technology, economics, marketing, and the general run of multinational business. This demand mostly goes beyond restricted conceptions of translation; it would have more to do with notions such as the ‘intercultural management assistant’ or ‘consultant’, the ‘language-services provider’ or ‘information broker’, with what has more modestly been termed the ‘multitasking translator’, or perhaps even with a conscious extension of the IT term ‘localization’. In all these areas, professionals are called upon to do more than just translate. They can be paid two to four times the comfortable salaries earned by tenured teachers of translation; they know what time they start work, they do not know when they will finish; they work nights and weekends; they can afford luxury goods that they have little time to use. The growth of this sector has been so fast, the power structures so dynamic and fragmentary, and the salaries so high, that there are relatively few official regulations in force, and little question of unionism or collective action. This is fundamentally where people are paid for what they can do, and not particularly for where they have come from, what kind of university degree they have, or what social structures are around to protect them. The providers of language services in this segment would tend not to confuse their professional activity with belonging to a territorial culture; their specialized knowledge would formally make them participative members of a professional caste: in between A and B, there is now something else, something like a set of globalized professions, or even what I would like to call ‘intercultures’. But we are not here to coin terms.

Why mention the development of these three market segments? Well, first, they seem to be growing further apart, so we might expect translators’ associations to be somewhat stretched by the process. Second, the lines of demarcation would seem not to reflect anything quite as neat as ‘literary’ vs ‘non-literary’ translation, which opposition might belong to a by-gone age. Third, and most importantly, our training programmes are doing very little to address these changes.
In Spain, where I try to translate and teach, the general quality of everyday pragmatic translations at the bottom end of the market, those for the tourist industry or whatever, is just as bad or even worse than it was thirty years ago. At the same time, the growing top-end of the labour market remains inadequately supplied with appropriately skilled professionals. And in our all-comfortable middle, scarcely a feather is ruffled.

Hermes—God of Translators and Interpreters

2005-04-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

The Origins of Language
and the Prehistory of Interpreting

by Alexander Gross

A historical inquiry into the earliest days of interpreting, demonstrating how they provide a window onto both the "prehistory" of translation and the origins of language. Paper just presented on March 24 at the Translation2000 Conference, sponsored by the NYU Translation Studies Program.

Three-Sentence Précis of Paper:

The ancient Greek word for interpreter/translator is Hermêneus, directly related to the name of the god Hermes.

Its many further meanings—mediator, go-between, deal-broker, marriage-broker—open up a window onto the work of interpreters during prehistory.

And the knowledge that we gain of this prehistory thanks to these meanings provides an additional window opening onto the origins of language itself.

Comment on the preceding Précis:

This three-sentence summary contains two leaps. The first leap is from the premise that the Greek word for translator/interpreter has many other social, economic, and even peace-making connotations to the conclusion that interpreters almost certainly had to exist during the period before writing was invented, commonly known as "prehistory." This will be an easy leap for an audience of professional interpreters and translators—in fact the first audience for whom this paper was written—nor should other literate audiences find this leap terribly difficult to achieve.

The second leap may a bit harder for some to negotiate, at least on first hearing. It is based on the following inexorable logic:

Once we have in fact located interpreters on the far side of the "prehistory barrier"—which we successfully achieved during the previous step—the question then remains as to how far back into prehistory we may project the existence of these interpreters.

Here is the simple and logical answer to that question:

We may project the existence of interpreters as far back into prehistory as separate languages and dialects may have existed.

And how far back might that be?

Once again, a logical answer is almost immediately forthcoming:

Ever since language—or languages—first began.

And immediately we find ourselves directly on the threshold of the origin of language itself, which now becomes a legitimate question in itself and which this paper examines in some detail, providing a novel but perfectly logical perspective—and one entirely in keeping with Darwin's theory of evolution—onto this much debated subject.

Abstract:

The case for Hermes as the god of translators and interpreters is a clear and compelling one. While some European translators have campaigned for St. Jerome as the patron saint of translation, there are probably some good reasons, with all due respect to the translator of the Vulgate, for having a god of translation rather than a saint. First of all, in global terms Asians and others outside of Europe are more likely to respond to ancient Greek traditions than to Christian ones (as they do when they attend the Olympic Games), since similar "gods-of-the-road" are revered in Japanese, Chinese, and even Mayan culture. Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding the "divinity" of Hermes may open the way to some surprising new insights into translation history and broaden the scope of Translation Studies as a whole. Hermes was par excellence the god of interpreting, of quick-wittedness, of wily improvisation, and translation, like writing itself, was a later development. Several current schools of Linguistics have their grounding in ancient Greek works on grammar, but as we shall see, the Greeks themselves, following Plato, looked to two authorities where language was concerned: grammarians and interpreters. While grammarians have until recently rooted their quest for rules and their sometimes dubious claims of universality in the structure of a single language, interpreters have necessarily always been concerned with at least two or more languages and the frequently jagged interface between them. And as will be explained, the tale of Hermes can also open up unexpected vistas onto the prehistory of interpreting, an area usually regarded as beyond our study, and perhaps even help to unravel the mystery of the origins of language itself.

It should be added that Hermes of course also acted as divine messenger, presided over commerce and travel (both clearly linked to translation), and was the tutelary god of all the arts and crafts, including magic and matrimonial match-making. We may perhaps forgive him if he was also the god of thieves and deceit, since this function may spring somewhat naturally from some of his other attributes.

Text of Paper:

Hermes—God of Translators and Interpreters

The Origins of Language and the Prehistory of Interpreting

I want to thank you all for expressing your confidence in my little abstract by coming today. It's a rather odd abstract, if you've had a chance to think about it at all. It starts out as though it were some edifying literary exercise to raise the consciousness of translators and interpreters: Imagine, we must be pretty important after all, we even have a god. That's pretty impressive in itself, and perhaps the abstract should have stopped right there. But it didn't—it went right on and started wading into some very deep water. It actually claimed that certain unnamed schools of linguistics base their theories on what they call 'grammar' and look back to some rather late ancient Greek grammarians for part of their support, when if they had been listening to Plato, who wrote several hundred years earlier, they would have realized there are two authorities on language they ought to be consulting: both grammarians and interpreters.

That's pretty heady stuff. It goes far beyond a merely edifying presentation aimed only at interpreters and translators and actually suggests that the work we do can penetrate rather deeply into both the practical and theoretical side of language, so deeply in fact that we might actually be in a position to correct some of the reigning scholars in the mighty field of "Linguistics."

Specifically, the abstract says: "While grammarians have until recently rooted their quest for rules and their sometimes dubious claims of universality in the structure of a single language, interpreters have necessarily always been concerned with at least two or more languages and the frequently jagged interface between them."

Up to that point what was in the abstract was perhaps merely presumptuous, but what I just read you was something very close to a declaration of war. And if you've taken a look at my website and seen my piece "Thirty-three Reasons Why the Chomskians are Mistaken," you'll know I've gone a great deal further than that.

But even in the abstract, things don't stop here either. This author—I guess it's me—just keeps on going as though he had no sense at all. Next he's actually claiming that what we're about to learn about Hermes can open up "unexpected vistas onto the prehistory of interpreting." My god, the prehistory of interpreting—how can there even be such a thing? Even assuming it existed, how could we ever remotely know about it? But simply look at the speaker—he even has a chart behind him showing all the stages in human prehistory. Look at this—Australopithecus, the Southern Ape. Can he actually show us some connection between this chart and the prehistory of interpreting? [The "chart" in question is a two- by three-foot 1997 National Geographic fold-out poster entitled "Seeking Our Origins," displaying a dramatic visusalization of human development over the last four million years.] But he still isn't done—the abstract actually ends up with the suggestion that everything he's said so far--and that was crazy enough—might actually help us to unravel the mystery of—are you ready for this?—"the origins of language itself."

Is the speaker standing here before you simply a raving megalomaniac? Has he finally gone beyond all reasonable bounds? Can he possibly present any credible evidence for any of these claims?

Oddly enough, not only can I present a fair amount of credible evidence for every single one of these claims, that's just what I'm about to do. So I hope you will forgive me for this slightly unconventional introduction. From this moment onward I shall observe all the well-established rules for academic presentations and provide clear references and even the odd source note for every statement I am about to make. Yes, it will definitely be a more conventional treatment—but that doesn't mean for a moment that it's going to be boring.

I'd like for us all to take a remarkably long journey together, and as our first step in that journey I'd like to start with a fairly prosaic analysis of some of the more ancient words for "translator" and "interpreter." And specifically the ancient Greek word Hermêneus, which is translated as both "interpreter" and "translator." But wait a second—it's got a whole lot of other possible translations as well. Here they all are:

[SLIDE 1]

Hermêneus

Interpreter, especially of foreign terms
dragoman
court interpreter
matrimonial agent
go-between
broker, commissionaire

the verb Hermêneuo

interpret foreign tongues,
translate
explain, expound, put into words
express, describe, write about

Why do we have all these other possible definitions? They all come from the standard ancient Greek lexicographical source, the Liddell Scott Lexicon. And that Lexicon adds one other crucial fact that no one has ever disputed, that both these words are directly derived from the name of the god Hermes.

In other words, when you conjugate the verb to translate or interpret in Greek, Hermêneuo, hermêneueis, hermêneuei, what you are also unavoidably saying is something like I hermese, you hermese, he or she hermeses, or if you will forgive a slightly slangier version:

I make like Hermes
You make like Hermes
He or she makes like Hermes...

Why is this? Because the God Hermes is seen as an active force of nature, as fulfilling an active need of nature: to explain, to clarify, to translate, to interpret.

In other words, the Greeks take it for granted that things aren't always clear—which they often are not—and that we need some way of making them more clear—which we often do. And they've invented a God to do this for them. And Hermes is that God.

Now that word dragoman is especially interesting, and I want to come back to it. But first I want to take what we just did with Greek and do much the same thing for Latin. Here the word for either a translator or an interpreter is a more familiar one:

Interpres

Now let's look at all the meanings a standard Latin dictionary gives for this word, and I think you'll note a few similarities with the Greek example:

[SLIDE 2]

Meanings of interpres:

[inter pres: prehendo, prendo, to catch, lay hold of, grasp, take]

(as in modern Italian: Il ladro, l'hanno preso—they caught the thief)

Literally: "Caught in between"

A middle man, mediator,
broker, negotiator,
Interpres divum, messenger, Mercury
Explainer, expounder, translator, interpreter

The source for these is also a very standard work, An Elementary Latin Dictionary by Charlton Lewis.

And finally I want to go back and look at the word dragoman, which as we will see is in some ways the most remarkable of the three, and then I want to make some generalizations about what all three of these words have to teach us.

(I should start by reassuring anyone else in the audience who like me just might have an ear for puns and also an ear for slightly off-color nuances that the word "dragoman" definitely does NOT mean a man who dresses up in women's clothing.)

[SLIDE 3] Dragoman...

One of the world's oldest words-

Spanish: Trujaman
French: Trucheman
Latin: Dragumannus
Greek: Dragoumanos
Arabic: Targuman
Aramaic: Turgemana
Mishnaic Hebrew: Targûm
Akkadian: Targumanu

Its meaning:

about 50% interpreter

40% go-between, mediator,
middle-man, broker

10% translator

This may well be one of the most ancient words we have in all the world's languages. Once again, I'm not making any of this up, my source here is just about any standard college-level dictionary I've looked at, including the one I use, the Houghton Mifflin American Heritage. Obviously a lot of this is etymology and not actual linguistic equivalents, but I've come up with my notion as to what its overall meaning is likely to be both from my own research and from talking to Charles Diamond, our Turkish expert in the NY Circle of Translators, who tells me you'll still find people calling themselves "dragoman" in Istanbul today, more or less guides to the sites of the city with some but not necessarily a great deal of linguistic knowledge, who take tourists around the sites for a fee.

Now I'd like to pull all of this together by asking you to consider why we have all these additional translations for Hermêneus, or for Interpres, and not simply "translators" or "interpreters." Why are we seeing so much of "middle-man," mediator, go-between, deal-broker," "negotiator," my god, even marriage broker.

I think most of you already know the reason for some of this, so this isn't that hard to explain. It's because we've done all these things in the past, and to a certain extent we still do most of them even today. The fact of being an interpreter or a translator, though especially an interpreter, frequently puts us in a position where we have to play these other roles as well. Some of my courtroom interpreter friends have told me of a few rather hairy situations where one side or the other in a trial—though perhaps more often the defendant—would put pressure on them to use language favorable to their side. An Arabist colleague informs me that the government can sometimes exert such pressure in order to convict alleged Muslim terrorists, and although I am not an Arabist myself, it sounds to me as if our government may have been exerting undue pressure in their so-called translation of words spoken by the pilot of the recent Egyptian Air tragedy.

So whether we like it or not, we are frequently called upon to play this middle-man, go-between role, and we sometimes actively seek it out or resent it when we are discouraged from playing it. I think we've all often heard translators asking:

Can I drop a footnote?
Can I explain something in brackets?
Can I get more information from the client,
so I can understand the process,
so I can translate it properly?

We're frequently called upon to play this middleman role, even if we do so-called "technical" translation. As for "marriage-broker," that could often also be a part of our job as deal-maker and even peace-maker: as recently as the nineteenth century peace treaties between nations could be further ratified by a wedding between two royal offspring from the disputing nations. And we're just about to see what this notion of marriage-broker may also have to do with the prehistory of our profession. There—I said it, that word, prehistory, and I'm going to say it several times again. Because when we see all these additional definitions for Hermêneus or interpres, we're also seeing all the additional tasks interpreters were expected to perform, and we're also looking directly back into what life had to be like in the preliterate era, which is to some extent an alternate way of saying prehistory.

But now, just as a slight change of pace, let's listen to two things that Plato had to say about our profession. The second one is a bit more flattering than the first, but neither one is really that terrible. First, from his dialogue Cratylus:

SOCRATES: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech, and signifies that he is the interpreter (Hermeneus), or messenger, or thief, or liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do with language. (Translation by Benjamin Jowett)

Here we not only get to see Socrates confirming for us this connection between Hermes and our trade. Here I think we can also begin to see why translators and interpreters can sometimes acquire a less than positive image, and not just for translating or interpreting incorrectly either. In any translation there is always the possibility of a mistake. But more than a mistake, there is also a chance— however slight—that the translator might know something the client doesn't know, and so the client might be taken advantage of. After all, the translator or interpreter knows what is really going on—he or she is potentially in something of a position of power. If there is a chance for financial or social or other gain, the translator would have to be more of a saint than the general run of people not to take advantage of it. And whenever translators or interpreters do something like this, just as whenever they make an error in translation, you can be sure that they will be remembered for it.

It's also important to remember how truly international this figure of a trickster god who creates language truly is and how widely recorded it is in the world's mythology. Hermes recurs in ancient Egypt as Thoth, of course, but as Lewis Hyde points out in his book Trickster Makes This World, he can also be seen as the African Eshu, as any number of figures such as Coyote or Raven in Native American folklore, as Loki among the Norse, the child Krishna in Indian tradition, or even China's Monkey King, and in the latter case we have an example of a tale about a god being inspired by the travels of a real-life translator, the seventh century Xuanzang. In other words, Hermes in his various manifestations is truly worthy of being the god of translators on an international scale.

Now let's look at Plato's more positive description of us. It comes from his dialogue Theaetetus and is a crucially important quotation in the history of both language and linguistics. Attempting to distinguish knowledge from perception, Socrates teasingly asks Theaetetus whether people truly know a foreign language merely by seeing it in writing or hearing it spoken. In a reply praised by Socrates, Theaetetus states that we can only know what its letters look like and what its spoken form sounds like...

but we do not perceive through sight and hearing, and we do not know, what the grammarians and interpreters teach about them. (Translated by Benjamin Jowett)

And there they are, side by side, interpreters and grammarians, each of them invested with full powers as teachers. If anything, the interpreters have a slight edge, since it is assumed that grammarians can only be of use in describing the letters or written form of the language (and of the two ancient Greek words for grammarians, both closely related to the word for "letters," the one Plato uses here is the more demeaning one, usually meaning merely a "schoolmaster,"), while only the interpreters can tell us what is truly being said. In other words, if you want to know something about language, it might be a good idea to consult both.

It's often been observed that in myths we can find recorded or encoded some very real history. And that's what I think we've discovered here as well, so with that in mind, let's now go back to all those other meanings the Greek and Latin words for translator seem to have, including middle-man and go-between and deal-broker and even marriage-broker. Because in these meanings I believe we have a window looking through into the prehistory of our profession. Even the prehistory of the human race. And that is what I am now going to be talking about, the prehistory of interpreting, which is necessarily also the prehistory of translation.

And I think we're going to see that it isn't that hard to discuss this subject either, because I'm going to show you two other ways we can know about that prehistory. Not just based on the meanings of words, which is what I've been describing up until now. But there is also an inferential method of knowing about that prehistory. And there's even a method for knowing about it based on observations we can make here and now today, even quite close to home. And all three of the methods, as you will see, work quite closely together to confirm what I am about to tell you.

So now let's make an end to all the mystery and proceed into prehistory.

What is the prehistory of translation?

That's easy. The prehistory of translation is of course interpreting. History is by definition the period for which we have written records. When we go before there was any writing—or when we talk to people who don't know how to write—we are totally relying on interpreting. And on interpreters for that matter.

But how long did prehistory go on for? Now there's an interesting question. It goes on back for a very long time. In fact, as you can see from this chart in back of me, it can potentially go back as far as four million years. Or at least for as long as there have been spoken languages. But my god, how long has that been? Now perhaps you can begin to see why this paper is also talking about the origins of language, because it's just possible that interpreters—or people not all that unlike interpreters—may have played a role even then. But in any of these cases, do we have any real standards for measuring how long this period has been?

Here the answer is a most definite and even well-defined YES.

First of all, we know fairly well when it ended, which is of course around 4000 BC in a few places but much later in most other places. But when did prehistory begin? Now this is where things begin to get interesting, and you can start to see why I am linking up Hermes and all these extra definitions for translator on the one hand with prehistory and the origins of language on the other.

Let me pass out these sheets at this time. Each of these sheets shows a time-clock, which I'm calling, like the subtitle for this paper "The Origins of Language and the Prehistory of Interpreting—A Chronology." You may have seen something like this time-clock before, probably relating to geology and the age of the earth, but never in connection with the prehistory of language. The somewhat similar-looking chart you'll see in geology books shows the age of the earth. Or the one for biology that starts with the origin of life. In either case the time periods are far longer than the ones I'm showing you here today. The one for geology is based on the famous 4.5 billion year age of the earth, with all of recorded human history entering in only at one second before midnight.

This one is a little easier to comprehend: it includes only the four million or so years that man in some form has been on this planet, and as you can see based on this twenty-four hour clock, written history, dating from about 4000 BC only begins about two and a quarter minutes before midnight. That's a lot better than one second before midnight.

I've had to invent a word to describe the problems a lot of people have when confronted by this sort of time frame. I call that word dyschronopia, the inability to conceive of or even look at time in this manner.

Dys-, meaning difficulty, faulty, bad, even disease, as in dyslexia. Chron- from chronos, or time, as in chronic or chronometer. -opia, looking at, vision, as in myopia, A difficulty in looking at time.

CAPTION FOR ILLUSTRATION, taken from the text below:

But there is one other excellent reason to suppose that the development took place over a longer rather than a shorter period. The sheer complexity of the task of working our way up from the relatively simple signals contained in our scent markings must have required many stages and phases of elaboration before they could take on the nuances of what we like to differentiate as supposedly "mature" language. Organs of speech had to change and develop, as did organs of hearing, not to mention the areas of the brain needed to regulate them. At every stage there must have been countless disagreements as to what constituted a word or utterance, what should be recognized as a concept worthy of such an utterance, and precisely how that utterance should be pronounced, all taking place among constantly shifting micro-populations. For such a process to occur would require a positively mind-boggling panorama over time on an evolutionary scale. But this in no way presents an obstacle to the theory I am presenting, rather it confirms it many times over, for this is precisely what humankind had at its disposal: a postively mind-boggling panorama over time on an evolutionary scale, as we can see right here on the chart I've given you. Dates are of course conjectural, but that is not the same thing as saying they are impossible.

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Parenthetically, I've also been looking for a word to convey the problems most people have in conceiving of astronomical distances. So far the best I've come up with is agalaxopia. The inability of looking at—or conceiving of—galaxies. That's because I don't like the sound of dysgalaxopia. If anyone has a better idea... Or conceiving of the infinitely small—viruses, molecules, atoms and their particles—perhaps that one should be amicropia.

But let's get back to the prehistory of interpreting. So what we're looking at when we say "middle-man,""mediator," "go-between," "deal broker" and even "marriage broker" is what we did throughout prehistory. It's how human beings survived when we lived in far smaller communities, closer to the size of the bands in which primates gather to this day. It's how human beings survived, and it's how interpreters, people not all that unlike ourselves, helped them to survive—as middle-men, as brokers, and yes, as leaders. Yes, interpreters as leaders. Or as the close advisors to leaders.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about [SLIDE 4] from a preliterate society, an illustration of a gold finial, the topmost ornament on a traditional linguist's staff, held by the official tribal linguist as he sat next to the chief to advise him on complex negotiations and to question members of other tribes in their own language. It comes from nineteenth century Southern Ghana, a culture rich in its own highly sophisticated traditions, as those of you who have seen the PBS presentation on their asafo trading flags may be aware.

Now we can argue as to precisely how long our role in that human prehistory lasted, whether it goes back all the way for four million years to Australopithecus anamensis or whether it starts with the advent of Homo erectus two million years ago or whether it even had to wait until Archaic homo sapiens came along eight hundred thousand years ago.

But however long it lasted, even though that's a long time ago, using my dramatic license and my background as a playwright, I think I can duplicate for you a dialogue that went on over and over and over again during that that incredibly long period of time.

VOICE 1: Look, we've got to talk with them.

VOICE 2: We can't talk with them—they don't even speak our language.

VOICE 3: But they're our enemy—they live on the other side of the hill.

VOICE 1: But we have to talk to them—we've got to find a wife for El-El.

VOICE 4: And don't forget—we also have to find a husband for La-La.

VOICE 5: Yeah, we can't let them marry each other. That didn't work out so well last time.

VOICE 2: Oh, alright. But how are we going to talk to them?

VOICE 1: We've got Dub-Dub here. He speaks a little of their language. From when they kidnapped him. Can you handle this for us, Dub-Dub?

DUB-DUB: Yeah, it's a little dangerous, but I can probably handle it for you.

And there it all starts to come together. Go-between. Mediator. Marriage-broker. Interpreter.

And that's not the only kind of argument they could have. People could also argue over the correct form of words. I say the word for hill is wug-wug. The people on the other side of the hill call it wug-a-wug. And we've even got a few people in our own group who think you need separate words for the side of the hill, ooowug, the top of the hill, wugooo, and the way the hill looks in the twilight, wugganah.

After all, people fight over the correct form of words even today, so why wouldn't they have done much the same then as well? And some of those fights could sometimes turn nasty. Just as they can today, even among highly literate people. You just have to listen to some of the disagreements between rival academic linguistic clans to know what I'm talking about.

So what happens if those people who say ooowug and wugooo get angry and move around to another side of the hill to form a new clan? They take those words with them, and most of our people grow up not even knowing what they mean.

And let's be honest, humans beings are sometimes not all that bright. So this sort of thing went on for what?—two, three, maybe four million years...

I can't say for sure, but I think the longer period is more likely. I'll tell you why after a bit.

Guess how many times during all those years that little dialogue, or something very like it took place. Or how often that disagreement about the correct form of words took place. Not all these little arguments ended happily. Not all of the groups agreed to work with each other. Add to all this competition over turf and hunting rights.

Not all of the interpreters were successful. Not all the women found husbands or the men found wives.

How do we know this? Inference based on the present. Things like this still happen today. Even during the historical period we've seen a slow process of small families becoming clans, clans becoming larger tribes, tribes moving towards alliances, and alliances moving towards nations. You just have to take that process back further until you get close to groups of prehistoric people close to the size of bands of apes and even monkeys.

Here's an example from Chinese. This is the character qiao, second tone [SLIDE 5]. It's usually translated as "overseas," as in hua qiao, overseas Chinese. Huaqiao de qiao. But my Chinese professor tells me that its original meaning was simply "someone from the next village." And later someone from the next region or province. So there you see once again the process the village moving outward until it becomes the entire world.

And it could also be positively dangerous being an interpreter. One truly dramatic example of this, to jump back into recorded history for a moment, comes from Plutarch in his life of Themistocles:

"When the king of Persia sent messengers into Greece, with an interpreter, to demand earth and water, as an acknowledgment of subjugation, Themistocles, by the consent of the people, seized upon the interpreter, and put him to death, for presuming to publish the barbarian orders and decrees in the Greek language; this is one of the actions he is commended for..." (This was translated by my honored colleague John Dryden.)

I think we also have to imagine this sort of event happening over and over again throughout the countless centuries of prehistory as well, as tribes and clans moved in every possible direction. The interpreter's motives could easily be misunderstood, even by his own people. And we wouldn't expect him to be enormously popular with members of the opposing group either.

So we know a great deal more about our prehistory than we thought we knew simply through inference. Another way we know about this incredibly long period of time called prehistory is that it still isn't completely over. There are still lots of people left on this planet living in a preliterate condition.

As soon as I say that, some of you will think, oh yes, well perhaps somewhere far away, say in Africa or India or South America. How about just a few blocks away? More and more of those people are coming right here to the US. They really don't understand what our fabulous modern life is all about, though they're happy enough to latch onto some of its external features.

And guess who among us has a very good chance of running into them? Once again, it's us, it's you—interpreters who work in the hospitals or the courtrooms. Because many of these illiterate or preliterate or semi-literate people have a very shaky notion of our legal system or of modern medicine and what they do know can often run counter to both. And we quickly discover that they are also relying on age-old notions of family loyalty and seeking out husbands or wives through marriage brokers.

So this is pretty much what happened to us, the human race, as we began to mature and language slowly developed among us.

Which brings us rather organically to the question of the origin of language. How did these early versions of man, or woman, or person, Australopithecus, the Southern Ape, learn to speak in the first place? What we are going to see is that just as the many meanings of the Greek and Latin words for interpreter provided us with a window onto prehistory, so what we now know about prehistory also provides us with a window opening directly onto the origins of language.

There has been an enormous amount of conjecture over these origins in recent years, with large numbers of scholarly papers devoted to this question. In fact there is even something called the Language Origins Society (LOS)—it was founded in 1983 and has been holding yearly conferences entirely devoted to ferreting out the answer to this enigma ever since 1985. While their aims could not possibly be more earnest, based on many papers presented at these conferences it would appear to be open season on this subject, with just about everyone free to take a pot shot. One problem is that everyone is so specialized today that they can only see their own little segment of the subject—the blind men and the "language origins elephant," so to speak.

Another problem is something that I would love to have remembered as Gross's Law: all scholarship tends to expand exponentially to occupy the total number of scholars available to carry it out. And/or the total number of budget lines available to fund it. And so you find vast numbers of specialists with no real background in the practical side of language all trying to come up with novel theories of their own. Some concentrate on the shape of the vocal chords over time, some on almost infinitely small problems of neuroscience, others on so-called logical languages. Other papers presented at these conferences, all supposedly aimed at discovering the origins of language, have been concerned with communication in the womb, gesture as proto-language, proto-indo-european root forms, Gestalt psychology, the possible influence of bird songs, paleolaryngeology, echolocation, Chomskyan linguistics, and assorted hyper-symbolical, postmodernist, and other French litcrit approaches. Quite a few papers manage to avoid the topic of language origins altogether.

And almost all of them assume that there had to be some truly momentous event, some great divide, some magical, decisive, and defining moment in which human language suddenly took flight and completely separated itself from those horribly rude and base noises made by animals. After all, we're different from animals, we're superior to them, aren't we? There's no way that we could be using the same method that animals use to communicate, is there?

Promise me you won't walk out of this hall until I have fully explained what I am about to say. It is my contention, it is more than my contention, it is in my opinion a matter of demonstrable proof that human beings—and I can even offer some evidence for what I am about to say—that human beings and animals even today still communicate in exactly the same way.

Did I say that human beings go around mooing and clucking and oinking and barking the way animals do? No, that's not what I said at all, I said that human beings and animals even today still communicate in exactly the same way. The difference between them is entirely a question of degree, not a question of method, or essential nature, or of definition.

I've already published a brief version of my position in a fairly obscure publication, I have a much longer and more elaborate version I am working on—though not necessarily a better one—and hope soon to publish in some form, and I also have a more humorous version of this theory, as contained in my computer program Truth About Translation, which if time were to permit—which it doesn't—I could also read to you.

But let me start with the brief version, and I hope you'll forgive me for using a few paragraphs I've already published—they have a somewhat different meaning in today's context in connection with interpreters and Hermes. They first appeared in the ATA's own Sci-Tech Translation Journal back in 1993 and as slightly revised here remain by far the best shorter description of this process I've come up with so far.

The long-debated origins of language—variously attributed to a number of equally unlikely theories—are so inauspicious and unpersuasive that readers may wonder what point there can be—like so much else in linguistics—to any further discussion at all. But once we turn our attention to biological development, both of the species and of our related animal cousins, a different perspective may unfold, and some startling insights may just be within our view. As human beings we frequently congratulate ourselves as the only species to have evolved true language, leaving to one side the rudimentary sounds of other creatures or the dance motions of bees. It may just be that we have been missing something.

On countless occasions TV nature programs have treated us to the sight of various sleek, furry, or spiny creatures busily spraying the foliage or tree trunks around them with their own personal scent. And we have also heard omniscient narrators inform us that the purpose of this spray is to mark the creature's territory against competitors, fend off predators, and/or attract mates. And we have also seen the face-offs, battles, retreats, and matings that these spray marks have incited.

In an evolutionary perspective covering all species and ranging through millions of years, it has been abundantly shown time and time again—as tails recede, stomachs develop second and third chambers, and reproduction methods proliferate—that a function working in one way for one species may come to work quite differently in another. Is it really too absurd to suggest that over a period of several million years, the spraying mechanism common to so many mammals, employing relatively small muscles and little brain power, may have wandered off and found its place within a single species, which chose to use larger muscles located in the head and lungs, guiding them with a vast portion of its brain?

This is not to demean human speech to the level of mere animal sprayings or to suggest that language does not also possess other more abstract properties. But would not such an evolution explain much about how human beings still use language today? Do we really require "scientific" evidence for such an assertion, when so many proofs lie so self-evidently all around us? One proof is that human beings do not normally use their nether glands—as do some but by no means all mammals—to spray a fine scent on their surroundings, assuming they could do so through their clothing. They do, however, undeniably talk at and about everything, real or imagined. It is also clear that speech bears a remarkable resemblance to spray, so much so that it is sometimes necessary to stand at a distance from some interlocutors.

(I should add that I insert a footnoteat this point pointing out that this resemblance extends even to the etymology of the two words, speech and spray, which are closely related in the Indo-European family, as shown by a variety of words beginning with spr- or sp- related to spraying and spreading: English/German spread, sprawl, spray, sprinkle, sp(r)eak, spit, spurt, spew, spout, Spreu, spritzen, Sprudel, Spucke, spruehen, sprechen, Dutch spreken, Italian sprazzo, spruzzo, Latin, spargo, Ancient Greek spendo, speiro, etc. The presence of the mouth radical in the Chinese characters for "spurt," "spit," "language," and "speak" may to some extent also indicate how related these concepts are on a cross-cultural level.]

Would not such an evolution also aptly explain the attitudes of many "literal-minded" people, who insist on a single interpretation of specific words, even when it is patiently explained to them that their interpretation is case-dependent or simply invalid? Does it not clarify why many misunderstandings fester into outright conflicts, even physical confrontations? Assuming the roots of language lie in territoriality, would this not also go some distance towards clarifying some of the causes of border disputes, even of wars? Perhaps most important of all, does such a development not provide a physiological basis for some of the differences between languages, which themselves have become secondary causes in separating peoples? Would it not also permit us to see different languages as exclusive and proprietary techniques of spraying, according to different "nozzle apertures," "colors," viscosity of spray, or even local spraying conditions? Could it conceivably shed some light on the fanaticism of various forms of religious, political, or social fundamentalisms? Might it even explain the bitterness of some scholarly feuding?

Of course there is more to language than spray, as the species has sought to demonstrate, at least in more recent times, by attempting to preserve a record of their sprayings in other media, such as stone carvings, clay imprints, string knottings, and of course scratchings on tree barks, papyri, and different grades of paper, using a variety of notations based on characters, syllabaries or alphabets, the totality of this quest being known as "writing." These strivings have in turn led to the development of a variety of knowledge systems, almost bewildering in their number and diversity of styles, slowly merging and dissolving through various eras and cultures in a multi-dimensional, quasi-fractal continuum. Thus, language may turn out to be something we have created not as a mere generation or nation, not even as a species, but in the embryologist Von Baer's sense as an entire evolutionary phylogeny.

Now of course I realize that this theory—I think it's more than a theory myself—has a certain shock value. People don't like to be reminded that they're not all that different from animals. This was true in Charles Darwin's time, and it's still true today, when we find that Darwin's ideas are still under attack. If anything, I believe this account of how language developed represents one more major proof that Darwin was totally and stunningly correct. If we can say that Darwin dropped one shoe, the biological shoe when he published his theory, I would truly love to imagine—though I apologize in advance for such grandiloquence—that I've dropped the other shoe, the linguistic shoe, today, if only because it may focus attention on the true grandeur of the original discovery.

I have a few other comments I've developed about this matter, and I'll get to them in a moment—and I hope there's time for me to read the semi-humorous version of the theory as well, though I doubt it. But I would like to add that I have done one small piece of research which I believes strengthens the validity of my position. If we assume that our immediate ancestors in the human family tree, seen here in the chart, had already begun to abandon scent markings in favor of language, it would be reasonable to also assume that the hominid apes, chimpanzees and gorillas among them, were already busy doing something similar. I sent a copy of the article containing what I just read you to my colleague Dr. Jane Goodall and asked her whether or not chimpanzees used scent markings to any great extent, and she most graciously sent me back a reply that, much as we might expect, no, they do not, though males ready to mate do give off a rather strong odor.

This is one of the main reasons why I favor the earlier date and the longer period—a full four million years—during which humans started to play with language. Since today's hominid apes are already in the process of abandoning scent markings, it would appear logical to assume that humans had already begun to abandon them as well and were in the process of developing language. This may be the only type of field evidence that may be available to confirm my position, and I'm happy to note that in this instance it does appear to do so, though in a few minutes I will be suggesting a small scientific experiment each of you can perform even while listening to me speak that also tends to confirm this theory. Almost all other animals, great and small, do to one extent or another most definitely use scent markings as a means of communication. And in their elaborated, evolved form as language, leaving out the olfactory element along the way, that is what human beings use as well.

But there is one other excellent reason to suppose that the development took place over a longer rather than a shorter period. The sheer complexity of the task of working our way up from the relatively simple signals contained in our scent markings must have required many stages and phases of elaboration before they could take on the nuances of what we like to differentiate as supposedly "mature" language. Organs of speech had to change and develop, as did organs of hearing, not to mention the areas of the brain needed to regulate them. At every stage there must have been countless disagreements as to what constituted a word or utterance, what should be recognized as a concept worthy of such an utterance, and precisely how that utterance should be pronounced, all taking place among constantly shifting micro-populations. For such a process to occur would require a positively mind-boggling panorama over time on an evolutionary scale. But this in no way presents an obstacle to the theory I am presenting, rather it confirms it many times over, for this is precisely what humankind had at its disposal: a postively mind-boggling panorama over time on an evolutionary scale, as we can see right here on the chart I've given you. Dates are of course conjectural, but that is not the same thing as saying they are impossible.

Most other argument on this subject has centered around whether or not the larynx of our prehistoric ancestors could support something as sophisticated as true speech and whether or not the hyoid bone in those species was capable of supporting the larynx. I see no reason why our ancestors had to suddenly discover "true speech" all at once, and in any case the evidence is not overwhelming either way in either area. Nor is there any compelling reason to assume—as do some theorists—that the earliest languages had to possess as many sounds as our modern languages: here too an evolutionary process may taken place. And at least some theorists speculating on this question are clearly suffering from "dyschronopia:" for instance, Steven Pinker in his recent book Words and Rules insists that it is simply reasonable to assume that language must have evolved only once, thus coming close to the Biblical assumption of a single language and a Tower of Babel incident that cast them asunder. In so doing, he also comes close to the silliness of Voltaire's famous court lady at Versailles who said:

What a pity that accident with the Tower of Babel should have got languages all confused--otherwise everyone would have always spoken French.

Pinker fails to recognize that human evolution has necessarily been a remarkably slow and massive continuum, lasting over four million years, during which language could easily in fact have evolved hundreds of times, if such a process had been required. Evolution still continues to take place, even at the most primitive level, in the seas all around us and perhaps also in the seas of our bloodstream as it nourishes our brains.

I am not sure how much more support I truly need to express for the theory presented here—I rather believe that it is the obligation of those who may oppose it to provide a negative proof, that this theory is not true. In my opinion this would be even harder to do than for me to provide definitive proof that it is true, as so much circumstantial evidence—along with the experiment I will soon be explaining—suggests it may be.

Here are some of the other thoughts I have developed about this matter, published only in a manner of speaking, since the sole place they appear is in a special file on the full registered version of my computer program Truth About Translation.

In other words, let's just play with the idea—without necessarily taking it seriously—that our languages (and perhaps even our understanding) might simply be a damp and dubious outer coating, an actual biological, evolution-determined extension of ourselves that we carry around with us, even though it has no totally physical form or shape, something that we can neither see nor see beyond. The proof that it exists is simply all the ways we act and interact every day, all the ways we understand and misunderstand each other, all those mistakes or shortcomings in translation between two languages or merely understanding a single one we commit without ever being aware of them. I wonder if this comparison to animal spray is really that much more far-fetched or counter-intuitive or totally crazier than some of the cosmological and molecular theories going the rounds with their supposed galactic soap bubbles and vast clouds of virtual particles perpetually switching on and off in the middle of vast intergalactic vacuums.

I also find it quite revealing that this idea of language being related to animal spray or 'scent markings' should seem to have such a high shock value, at least for some people. Biologists have never hesitated to call scent markings a form of communication, so the only issue that seems to be shocking some people is that these scent markings have here been directly compared to human language and found analogous if not absolutely identical. The usual approach to describing human language is usually much more sanctimonious and self-congratulatory. The ultimate proof that we humans must be superior to all other animals, we are often told, is that we alone have invented Language. "Language"—invariably with a capital "L"—is far beyond the capability of all other species, who can therefore only be inferior to us. Language separates us from the beasts! But if true, why are we so defensive—and so arrogant—about this supposed mark of superiority?

Certainly language is far more complex than any system of animal signals so far studied, even though this could simply be due to the fact that we are interested in all sorts of matters that animals find relatively unimportant. But the resistance by some to the notion that language and animal spray could be linked may tell us more about ourselves than we care to admit. This notion is so counter-intuitive to so many observers that their resistance may come close to recalling the first reactions to Darwin's theory that man and ape might share a common ancestor. Whatever the final truth about human language and animal spray may finally prove to be, perhaps no theory capable of irritating so many people can be entirely mistaken.

In the meantime, here is the more formal reply to this question. It takes the form of a definition of "Language," as seen through the defining lens of this theory:

"Language. Any of the numerous complex systems of exudations or spray-sound markings emitted by human beings and projected onto objects, other human beings, abstract processes, and seemingly repeatable occurrences. These networks of exudations purport to define, describe, explain, and classify relationships, artifacts, and value systems created by the human beings who produce the exudations. More or less similar systems of humid markings are shared by various groups of humans, these groups sometimes being known as families, tribes, nations, or cultures, and are commonly called "languages." Such systems vary to a greater or lesser extent among these groups, and a process of integration or disintegration in these systems can be readily identified throughout history and in human society today. On a biological and evolutionary scale, these systems may have evolved over time from analogous systems of scent markings produced by many animals for territorial and/or mating purposes. The territorial nature of human language, along with its similarity to animal markings, is evident in warfare, negotiations for treaties or business contracts, and much academic feuding.

"Specific systems of these markings as well as individual spray-sounds purporting to identify perceived objective realities or perceived relationships vary greatly among groups of humans. Over the centuries various attempts have been made to establish a unifying principle linking these systems, such as a "universal grammar" or a "conceptual glossary," but no such attempt has as yet proved truly workable. Qualified mediators between two systems, known as "translators" or "interpreters," have often enjoyed considerable success in converting between specific pairs of these systems, depending on the complexity of the material at hand, the amount of time allotted for the task, and the skill or ingenuity of the individual translator or interpreter."

I have spoken of circumstantial evidence supporting this theory, but by this time some of you may ask if there is any real proof for what I have been describing, any hard "scientific evidence." I believe I can show you quite dramatically that such scientific evidence does in fact exist, so let me come almost to the end of this paper by summarizing all the reasons favoring this theory.

1) Vast numbers of animals, including almost all mammals, employ some form of scent markings as a means of communication, so why would human beings be an exception?

2) This theory can provide a reasonable explanation for the entire period when the evolution of language must have taken place, quite possibly starting four million years ago and extending to the present.

3) Many known evolutionary processes in other animals display a comparable trade-off over time between form and function: fins becoming wings, forelegs becoming arms that reach, tails becoming sacral vertebrae and their adjoining coccyx, so it is by no means unprecedented that scent markings would have metamorphosed into the spray-sound markings of language.

4) As already noted, the goals of both scent marking and spoken language have much in common: the defense of turf, the assertion of status, and both attracting and clearly identifying a mate.

5) The obvious truth that humans do not use scent markings as such as a form of communication. Where else has this function gone if not into the development of language? And why has human sensitivity to olfactory signals declined within the same time period?

6) The unmistakable similarities between the words used for "speaking" and the words used for "spewing" or "spraying" in most Indo-European languages.

7) The embarrassing but equally unmistakable truth that the very act of employing spoken language also involves the emission of a thin but nonetheless quite discernible film of spray. As does even whispering. If you doubt this, then here is a little "scientific experiment" you can all try out for yourselves. Simply try speaking or whispering while standing directly before a mirror and watch its surface slowly become misted over just in front of your mouth. Or better yet, you can try this experiment right now without disturbing anyone by whispering to yourself directly into the palm of your hand. If you do so long enough, you will notice that one area of your palm has become a bit damper than the rest. So if you were looking for scientific evidence that speech and language are akin to animal spray, now you have it, and you hold it quite literally in the very "palm of your hand." (My wife somewhat maliciously suggested that I should ask you to whisper continuously into your neighbor's ear instead, but I won't inflict that on you.) In any case, what we call our lips have always been seen in biological terms as a flexible, nozzle-like orifice covering the buccal cavity, containing mucous membranes and their embedded salivary glands, empowered by a whole host of nearby aeration devices and spray-producing mechanisms.

8) The tragic but indisputable fact that disagreements between humans over language can have much the same consequences as conflicts over scent markings among animals: confrontations, attacks and retreats, and even battles ending in death.

Having listed these eight arguments favoring the evolution of language from scent markings, I do not believe it is the author's responsibility to offer any further defense for this theory. It is rather for those who imagine they oppose this theory to prove that it is mistaken. I do not believe they will be able to do so for the simple reason that such a proof would involve the totally unworkable task of trying to prove a negative over the unwieldy and remarkably elusive period of the last four million years.

And now I think I've told you just about everything I promised I would. We've talked about Hermes, and how interpreters functioned in prehistory, and we've discussed the origins of language. And everything I have presented today has come to us from the God Hermes, from the various meanings of the word interpreter in ancient Greek. In closing, I'd like to take us back to Hermes with a brief invocation to that God, coming from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, probably written some time around 800 B.C.

In this passage the God Apollo honors Hermes by bestowing upon him the tripartite sacred staff or caduceus by which he is known. It's just a few lines, I'll say them twice, once in ancient Greek, and once in English, and with this brief passage honoring Hermes I will close my presentation:

And now the English, as translated by H.G. Evelyn-White:

And Apollo swore also: `Verily I will make you alone to be an omen for the immortals and all alike, trusted and honored by my heart. Moreover, I will give you a splendid staff of riches and wealth: it is of gold, with three branches, and will keep you beyond all harm, accomplishing every task, whether of words or deeds that are good, which I claim to know through the utterance of Zeus.

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I want to thank all of you for coming, by all means visit me on my website, and if you are in New York on April 15 I would love to have you attend my free seminar on the theme "A Practical View of Translation History," yet another event sponsored by the NYU Translation Studies Program. Thank you again.

Principles of Translation

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"It will serve to demonstrate, that the art of translation is of more dignity and importance than has generally been imagined."
-Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler

Throughout the history of philosophy and linguistics, the essence of translation has been misunderstood. The importance of translation has been underappreciated, not only as an art form, but also as a way of expressing meaning and a method of interpreting being. Even the term translation has not been properly translated to our understanding.

Regarding translation, German philosopher Martin Heidegger remarked: "Somehow, through language, the process of translation liberates the essential from the confines of chronological time, bringing subjects into non-linear, reciprocal relationships of understanding and application. Translation brings to the fore what is hidden in language, by opening a space."

The Invisibility Of Translation
The sheer volume of texts of all kinds, both traditional written texts and new electronic ones, continues to increase exponentially and so will translation, as long as there is a need to transmit those texts over linguistic boundaries. Yet, despite this surge in world knowledge, the invisibility of translation persists.

Heidegger explains it this way: "The barrier of translation is curiously outside of the dimensions of space; in its invisibility, the good translator disappears from view, even while preserving the text. What is revealed is neither the essence of the translator as a being nor the text as a being; rather, in the contact of the translator with the text."

All reading is, in a sense, a kind of translation, a search for meanings in a text written by someone else. When reading or listening to a Shakespeare play, one can only wonder what happened to those words over the centuries, and what the different resonances of those words were for the playwright himself and for his contemporary actors and audiences.

Quite probably, the most important question in the thoughts of any author or reader is: Is translation possible? At one end of the debate, we have the idea that nothing is communicable or translatable; at the other extreme, we have the thought that everything is translatable into any language, as long as humanity recognizes that a degree of approximation is an acceptable human characteristic.

All forms of literature and speech can be accurately translated, including novels, movies, poetry, speeches, and non-fiction, obviously with different areas varying in difficulty of translation. Scholarly texts are usually translated by skilled professional translators. Metalanguage works, or works that discuss language, can be very difficult to translate usefully. Sometimes the metaphorical use of a word is more common than its literal use, idioms usually cannot be translated accurately.

Comic texts are notoriously difficult to translate, as noted by British novelist Virginia Woolf, who once said that "humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language." Poetry too is close to impossible to translate accurately because it depends as much on form as it does on meaning. Non-fiction, on the other hand, is often very straight forward to translate, as meaning is all that is important.

"The qualities of a good translator are not few."
-Martin Luther

The Translation Process
Translation theory is the study of proper principles of translation. Based on a solid foundation of understanding of how languages work, translation theory recognizes that different languages encode meaning in differing forms, yet guides translators to find appropriate ways of preserving meaning, while using the most appropriate forms of each language. Translation theory includes principles for translating figurative language, dealing with lexical mismatches, rhetorical questions, inclusion of cohesion markers, and many other topics crucial to good translation.

Basically there are two competing theories of translation. In one, the predominant purpose is to express as exactly as possible the full force and meaning of every word and turn of phrase in the original, and in the other the predominant purpose is to produce a result that does not read like a translation at all, but rather moves in its new dress with the same ease as in its native rendering. In the hands of a good translator neither of these two approaches can ever be entirely ignored.

Conventionally, it is suggested that in order to perform their job successfully, translators should meet three important requirements; they should be familiar with:

the source language

the target language

the subject matter

Based on this premise, the translator discovers the meaning behind the forms in the source language and does his best to produce the same meaning in the target language - using the forms and structures of the target language. Consequently, what is supposed to change is the form and the code and what should remain unchanged is the meaning and the message. (Larson, 1984)

Translation is therefore a process based on the theory that it is possible to abstract the meaning of a text from its forms and reproduce that meaning with the very different forms of a second language.

"Poetry is what is lost in translation."
-Robert Frost

Types of Translators
To be a good translator, one must be not only at ease in the source language, but also a skilled writer in the target language. For this reason, most translators choose to translate into their mother tongue. Depending on these matters of language proficiency, the procedures used will vary from project to project.

There are different groups of translators. There are translators employed in companies where they do clerical work and translate or write documents in various languages. There are freelance translators who work both inside and outside the publishing industry. Freelancers are highly independent, have little organization, and work either on their own or network with colleagues.

Translators who do not work for publishers are often called technical translators, even if they do not deal only with technical texts. Translators who work for publishers are often called literary translators, even if they deal with non-fiction or scientific texts. They usually provide a collaboration whose consistency is quite variable, and from the tax viewpoint, they are equated to writers.

Simultaneous translators are not textual translators, but rather interpreters. There job consists of listening and verbally translating a voice as it is being spoken.

"We are bound in two ways: to our mother tongue and to the mother tongue of the text we are translating."
-Martin Heidegger

Types of Translations
In practice, there is also considerable variation in the types of translations produced by translators. Some translators work only in two languages and are competent in both. Others work from their first language to their second language, and still others from their second language to their first language.

Two translators may be translating from the same source text and into the same target language, and yet the results may be very different. There is not one correct translation of a given text. Reasons for this variation include:

the purpose of the translation

the translation team itself

the target language audience for whom the translation is intended

The results are three translational philosophies that fall someplace on a continuum from literal translations to idiomatic translations. Literal (word-for-word) translations follow very closely the grammatical and lexical forms of the source text language, whereas idiomatic (thought-for-thought) translations are concerned with communicating the meaning of the source text using the natural grammatical and lexical items of the receptor language. Translations that add to the source text, paraphrase, or change certain information for a specific effect - such as a commentary - are called unduly free, or free translations.

"Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life."
-Voltaire

Ad Verbum vs. Ad Sensum
Translation is an old activity that has been practiced by man since ancient times, with only very few writings on the subject in the pre-linguistic age. No theory was ever developed since those writings were mainly produced by practitioners who confined themselves to mere impressions. Such writings were devoid of a systematic approach or objective measures. Scholars themselves distinguished between words and their meaning.

The early translators maintained that translation is a process of interpreting or embellishing the original text, and sometimes inserted their own ideas, or their own commentary directly into the text whenever it was redundant, uninteresting or even ambiguous. To such an extent then, translation was based upon personal impressions and subjective inclinations.

The famous debate over translation ad verbum (according to the verbal expression) and ad sensum (according to the meaning) originated in Roman times:

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman statesman, orator and writer, translated many Greek works into Latin. Cicero's approach to translation was sense for sense and not word for word. That means a translator should bear in mind the intended meaning of the source language and render it by means of target language words, which does not sound strange to the target language readers. Regarding his own translation style, Cicero stated: "If I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth (strange), and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator."

Pliny the Younger (AD 62-113) practiced and propagated translating as a literary technique. Unlike Cicero, Pliny tended towards word for word translation. Regarding the importance and usefulness of translations, he wrote: "You ask me what course of study I think you should follow. The most useful thing, which is always being suggested, is to translate Greek into Latin and Latin into Greek. This kind of exercise develops in one a precision and richness of vocabulary, a wide range of metaphor and power of exposition, and moreover, imitation of the best models leads to a like aptitude for original composition. At the same time, any point which might have been overlooked by a reader cannot escape the eye of a translator. All this cultivates perception and critical sense."

Jerome in the fourth century, like Cicero before him, was a representative of the latter method. In his famous "Letter to Pammachius", he remarks that "a word-for-word translation conceals the sense, even as an overgrown field chokes the grass." Despite those powerful words, Jerome clearly advocated two different methods of translation depending on whether the original was a secular text or a sacred text. Jerome defended literal translation whenever a highly authoritative text such as the Bible was at issue.

Boëthius in the sixth century adopted Jerome's literal translation position with respect to the works of renowned philosophers such as Aristotle: he translated word for word. Boëthius' translation strategy was followed in the Carolingian Renaissance by Johannes Scottus Eriugena, who made the philosophical and religious doctrines of the Greek Fathers accessible to Latin readers.

Having an eye for detail and accuracy, and hoping to create an authoritative translation, the early translator faced the challenge of obtaining good, high quality manuscripts. It was quite normal for there to be many manuscript versions circulating.

Yet, these early translators were not introverted copyists who spent every hour of their lives dutifully translating works understandable by only an enlightened inner circle. They were true scholars who understood what they were translating and possessed the temperament and intelligence necessary to lecture and converse with the intellectual leaders of their day.

"Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing."
-Harry Mathews

The First Published Principles
One of the earliest attempts to establish a set of major rules or principles to be referred to in literary translation was made by French translator and humanist Étienne Dolet, who in 1540 formulated the following fundamental principles of translation ("La Manière de Bien Traduire d’une Langue en Aultre"), usually regarded as providing rules of thumb for the practicing translator:

The translator should understand perfectly the content and intention of the author whom he is translating

The translator should have a perfect knowledge of the language from which he is translating and an equally excellent knowledge of the language into which he is translating

The translator should avoid the tendency to translate word for word, for to do so is to destroy the meaning of the original and to ruin the beauty of the expression

The translator should employ the forms of speech in common usage

The translator should - through his choice and order of words - produce a total overall effect with appropriate tone

Whatever be the severity of the persecution of translators like Dolet, the succeeding scholars upheld certain views of their predecessors. In the late sixteenth century, George Chapman, English poet, dramatist and the translator of "Homer", reiterated Dolet's views on "how to translate well from one language into another."

The seventeenth century witnessed a spurt in translations of Greek, Latin and French classics into English. The introductions written to the translations of these works discussed various translation techniques. In 1611, King James I of England commissioned scholars to translate a text of Bible that could be authorized for reading in the Churches. The King James Version of the Bible went on to have a great influence on the English language and literature.

Seventeenth century poet and translator, Abraham Cowley, advocated freedom in translation. He treated word-for-word translation as one mad man translating another. His contemporary, John Dryden, identified three types of translation:

Metaphrase - involving 'word by word' and 'line by line' translation

Paraphrase - involving 'sense for sense' translation

Imitation - involving variance from words and sense by abandoning the text of the original as the translator sees fit

In 1791, Scottish jurist and historian Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler published his celebrated "Essay on the Principles of Translation", in which he describes a good translation to be: "that, in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work."

Tytler proceeds to suggest certain rules to be used to guide translators in their work and as a criterion for judging the efficiency of their translations. According to Tytler, the ideal translation should:

give a complete transcript of the ideas and sentiments in the original passage

maintain the character of the style

have the ease and flow of the original text

The ideas of Tytler can give inspiration to modern translators and scholars, particularly his open-mindedness on quality assessment and his ideas on linguistic and cultural aspects in translations.

"I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing."
-Nancy Mitford

Modern Theories
With the flourish of modern linguistic studies, the literature on translation has started to become more objective and systematic. Modern translation theory has moved away from a purely linguistic perspective toward the methodology of incorporating non-linguistic disciplines, most notably Semiotics (the systematic study of signs, sign systems or structures, sign processes, and sign functions) to supplement existing theory.

In 1964, linguist Eugene A. Nida claimed to separate translation studies from linguistics, since one can translate without knowing anything about linguistics at all, in the same manner that one can speak a given language fluently without being a student of the science of language.

Knowledge of the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of language varieties, however, can be of great use in translation. With such knowledge, one can then search for the equivalent variety in the target language, find out its main characteristics, and bear them in mind in order to reproduce them, as far as possible, in the translated version. According to Nida, a translator:

analyzes the message of the text in question into its simplest and structurally clearest forms in the source language

transfers it at this simple level to the target language

restructures it at this simple level to the target language which is most appropriate for the particular type of audience in mind.

Such a summary is clearly on the right track. It encourages translators to concentrate on what is important, and to restructure the form when it is necessary to convey the meaning. Such an emphasis is especially helpful in a situation where communication is difficult, because it is better to transmit at least a minimal core content, rather than to produce a formal equivalent that does not work at all.

"The original is unfaithful to the translation."
-Jorge Luis Borges

Dynamic Equivalent Translation
Although the principle of dynamic equivalence has been in existence for a long time and has been used on rare occasions in older translations, it was first given that name and formulated as a systematic translation principle in the seventies by Eugene Nida.

According to Nida, "language consists of more than the meaning of symbols and the combination of symbols; it is essentially a code in operation, or, in other words, a code functioning for a specific purpose or purposes. Thus we must analyze the transmission of a message in terms of dynamic dimension. This dimension is especially important for translation, since the production of equivalent messages is a process, not merely of matching parts of utterances, but also of reproducing the total dynamic character of the communication. Without both elements the results can scarcely be regarded, in any realistic sense, as equivalent."

Linguists and teachers of translators developed this theory of dynamic equivalent translation to spell out in detail the differences between form and meaning, the differences between different languages, and the kind of practices that lead to sound translation. Central to the theory was the principle of translating meaning in preference to form.

Thus, dynamic equivalence, or functional equivalent translation, is one that seeks to represent adequately and accurately in good target language grammar, style, and idiom, that which the words and constructions in the source language conveyed to the original recipients.

By contrast, a formal equivalent translation is one that seeks to translate from one language to another using the same grammatical and syntactical forms as the donor language whenever possible.

"A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him."
-Samuel Johnson

The Ideal Translation
By definition, translation is the accurate rendering of a document into another language so that it is suitable for its intended purpose. Consequently, to be effective a translation must not only be complete and accurate, but must also reflect the correct use of grammar, appropriate writing style, and terminology consistent with the subject matter. In other words, the ideal translation should be:

accurate - reproducing as exactly as possible the meaning of the source text

natural - using natural forms of the target language in a way that is appropriate to the kind of text being translated

communicative - expressing all aspects of the meaning in a way that is readily understandable to the intended audience

Upon completion, the ideal translation will be accurate as to meaning and natural as to the target language forms used. An intended audience who is unfamiliar with the source text will readily understand it. The success of a translation is measured by how closely it measures up to these ideals.

The History of Translation

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"Without translation, there is no history of the world."

L. G. Kelly

Studying the history of translation helps those who are interested in translation, literature, and cultural studies to better understand the contribution of translation to civilization and to the development of all cultural and intellectual life. Translation is closely related to progress in that all the awakening periods in the history of nations have started with translations. Translation introduces nations to various perspectives on their paths to modernization and intellectual advancement.

In order to justify translation as an independent discipline, it is necessary to first construct a history of translation. By doing so, we bring to light how the cultural and intellectual interactions between people and civilizations took place throughout history. Regarding this, French theorist Antoine Berman wrote: "The construction of a history of translation is the first task of a modern theory of translation."

Translators through History
The ancient Greek word for translator-interpreter is Hermêneus, directly related to the name of the god Hermes. The verb Hermêneuo means to interpret foreign tongues, translate, explain, expound, put into words, express, describe, write about. The many further meanings of the Greek word for translator-interpreter (mediator, go-between, deal-broker, marriage-broker) suggest that interpreters almost certainly had to exist during prehistory - the period before writing was even invented.

In ancient times, ideas and insights used to be transferred from culture to culture primarily through travelers and tradesmen. Gradually, translation began to play, and continues to play, a key role in the development of world culture. For example, translation has played a major part in the movement of knowledge from Ancient Greece to Persia, from India to Arab nations, from Islam into Christianity, and from Europe to China and Japan.

There have been two great historical examples of how translation introduced one culture to another. One is the translation of the Buddhist scriptures from various Indian languages into Chinese. The second is the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific works from Greek and Syriac into Arabic, thereby introducing them to the Islamic world.

A history of world culture from the perspective of translation reveals a constant movement of ideas and forms, and of cultures constantly absorbing new influences because of the work of translators. It dispels the assumption that everything starts in the West and undermines the idea of rigid boundaries between East and West.

"Translators have invented alphabets, helped build languages and written dictionaries. They have contributed to the emergence of national literatures, the dissemination of knowledge, and the spread of religions. Importers of foreign cultural values and key players at some of the great moments of history, translators and interpreters have played a determining role in the development of their societies and have been fundamental to the unfolding of intellectual history itself." ("Translators through History", Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth, John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1995)

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
-Sir Winston Churchill

National Translation Movements
Major periods in the history of translation tend to coincide with eras when a major differential or inequality exists - or is perceived to exist - between two cultures or two peoples speaking different languages. One of these peoples perceives the need to absorb greater or higher knowledge from another, whether this knowledge is conceived in political, religious, or scientific terms.

All throughout history, the task accomplished by translators has acquired an extraordinary importance in the development and transmission of the cultural heritage of humankind. European culture, with all of its great wealth of knowledge, could not have been possible without the significant translation efforts of just a handful of countries: China, Greece, Iran, India, Iraq, Spain, and Ireland. The following national translation movements are considered by historians to have played a major role in the developmental path of world culture:
Prehistory: predominance of interpreting and mediating (marriage-brokers, deal-makers, peace-seekers, etc.)

Sumerians, Akadians, Assyrians: the need to make laws, creation tales and other scriptures, and economic norms known among peoples using different languages

Egyptians: the need to communicate with the Hittites and peoples in Southern Egypt

Greeks: the need to understand Egyptian civilization

Romans: the need to understand Greek civilization

Chinese (Seventh Century AD): the need to understand Indian civilization, especially Sanskrit and Pali scriptures

Arab and Persian World: (Jundishapur and Baghdad, Eighth to Tenth Centuries): the need to absorb and integrate Sanskrit, Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek knowledge into Persian and Arabic cultures

Irish (Eighth Century AD): the need for a decisive mediator between late antiquity and the Western Middle Ages, after the conquest of Spain by the Muslims resulted in the decline of Latin influence in Europe

Japanese (Ninth to Tenth Centuries): the need to understand and absorb Chinese culture, with Korea as an important intermediary

Western Middle Ages: the need to reabsorb and integrate Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek knowledge into medieval Europe

Renaissance: reintegration of Ancient Greek culture in the West

Conquest and colonization: the need to understand American, African, and Asian languages and dialects

Age of Enlightenment and Nineteenth Century: decline of Latin, emergence of modern national languages as the measure of human knowledge

Modern Times: many competing major and minor national languages

The Chang'an School
The earliest historical records show sporadic translation activities in China in the eleventh century BC. Documents from that time indicate that translation was carried out by government clerks, who were concerned primarily with the transmission of ideologies. In a written document from the late Zhou dynasty, Jia Gongyan, an imperial scholar, wrote: "Translation is to replace one written language with another without changing the meaning for mutual understanding."

This definition of translation, although primitive, proves the existence of translation theory in ancient China. Serious discussions on translation, however, did not begin until the introduction of Buddhism into the country during the Six Dynasties (222-589 AD), when Buddhist monks began translating classics of Buddhism into Chinese.

Before coming to China, Buddhism, which is of Indian origin, had already undergone several centuries of development. The translation of Buddhist literature from Pali and Sanskrit into Chinese proved to be a great undertaking and Buddhism became one of China's major religions. It was not only Buddhism, however, that had penetrated into China. Sankhya, tantra sastras, and other Hindu beliefs were also introduced into the thought of that country. The combined impact upon the world was profound, not only helping to reshape man's outlook and way of life, but also adding a written script, unique art, literature, and philosophy to the common wealth of mankind.

By the end of the fourth century, translation was officially organized on a large scale in China. A State School of Translation was founded for this purpose and Dao An, an imperial officer, was appointed its director. In 379, Dao An was abducted to Chang'an (Xi'an), where he started the famous Chang'an School. It was at this time that monks from Kashmir began to enter China in large numbers, bringing with them many texts from their homeland, which they translated into Chinese, and making the school one of the most important translation centers of the time.

Three of the most accomplished translators of the Chang'an school each adopted different theories regarding translation. Dao An insisted on a strict literal translation, i.e., that the source text should be translated word by word. The Indian scholar Kumarajiva, on the other hand, took up an opposite view and advocated a completely free translation method for the sake of elegance and intelligibility in the target language.

In his own translation practice, Chinese Buddhist scholar Xuan Zang combined the advantages of both Dao An's respect for the form of the source text, and Kumarajiva's free style of translation. Xuan Zang aimed to achieve an intelligibility of the translation for the target language readers, and developed his criteria that translation "must be truthful and intelligible to the populace." It might be during this period of time that there was the first discussion on literal translation vs. free translation - a core issue of translation theory.

Eventually, the translation of sutras lost importance in China and rulers directed their attention westward. Arabs began to settle in China, with some even becoming mandarins or merchants. Having learned the Chinese language, some of these erudite high officials began translating scientific works from Arabic or European languages. By the eighth century, conversion to Islam had already started in Central Asia.

"We will not wait to achieve progress; we will start where human knowledge has ended."
-Mary-Jo McConahay

Plato's Academy
The western academic tradition begins with the Greeks. Plato's Academy, established in Greece during the fourth century BC, was based on the ideological conviction that well-trained philosophers could reliably find truth. At that point in human history, philosophy was on the cutting edge of knowledge. For Plato, education was about turning the mind from "the world of becoming" (the world in all its transitory concerns) to the "world of being" (essences and ideals). It involved a shift of consciousness.

Plato founded his Academy in Athens, in about 387 BC. It was on land which had belonged to a man called Academos, and this is where the name Academy (Akademeia) came from. The Academy was an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences, and Plato presided over it from 387 BC until his death in 347 BC. Many intellectuals were schooled there, the most prominent being Aristotle. The Academy survived for 900 years, until it was closed down in 529 AD, making it the longest surviving university known.

The Academy played a critical role not only in the preservation of Greek knowledge, but also of Egyptian knowledge. Fueled by an intense desire to understand the coherent, complete and interrelated system of science, religion, art and philosophy of the Egyptian civilization, legendary Greek thinkers like Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, Herodotus (later to become known as the 'father of history'), and Plato himself, derived much of their wisdom and knowledge from the science of Ancient Egypt. Greek and Egyptian cultures became intertwined after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.

When the Christian emperor Justinian closed Plato's Academy during the holy crusade against classical thought, Christian heresy, and paganism, many of its members were forced into exile. As they fled, they took with them precious scrolls of literature, philosophy, and science. These scholar-refugees journeyed to Persia and other places east, looking for sanctuary under the rule of Sassanid King Khusro I, and in academies like the seventh century Academy of Jundishapur in Persia.

The Great Library At Alexandria
During the Greco-Roman era, the intellectual leadership shifted from Athens to Alexandria. Alexander the Great's dream of unifying the world sparked the idea of constructing a great library, which would gather the cultures and civilizations of the whole world. The location of this great library was Alexandria, Egypt, at the crossroads of the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe. In this historical moment, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was built on a site near the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The Great Library at Alexandria was the first recorded attempt at making a collection of all the world's recorded knowledge. Records report that it was connected to the Mouseion, or Temple of the Muses, which was an academy of learned men dedicated to the preservation, copying, and cataloging of knowledge. It was founded by the Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter around 300 BCE, whose great ambition was to possess all known world literature. Later, Ptolemy II Philadelphus gave it the mission of procuring a copy of every book that existed.

In addition to the acquisition of the bulk of Greek literature and a lot of the knowledge of Ancient Egypt, there is evidence that the The Great Library also incorporated the written works of other nations, including Buddhist writings and works from the Jewish, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and the newly emergent Roman traditions. Ancient historians claim that the library's 700,000 book collection was so comprehensive that no manuscript was available in any library worldwide that was not available in Alexandria.

Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle, was the first recorded librarian at Alexandria between 290 - 282 BC. According to Aristeas, writing 100 years after the library's inception, Ptolemy I delegated Demetrius the job of gathering books and scrolls, and of supervising a massive effort to translate works from other cultures into Greek. Because there was a large Jewish community living in Alexandria at the time, Demetrius made his first job the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek (the 'Septuagint') for which the Library hired 72 rabbis.

Ptolemy III Euregetes wrote to all the world's sovereigns asking to borrow their books in order to copy them. As the Greeks lent him the texts he copied them, kept the originals, and sent the copies back. In doing so he forfeited the rich deposit he had laid down, but he had the originals. Ships arriving at Alexandria were searched for books and the same copy and return procedure was inflicted. Works were not accepted as originals without rigorous textual criticism and comparison to other copies of the same work. In this way scribal mistakes could be routed out.

The Great Library at Alexandria was founded at a unique place and time which allowed its scholars to draw on the deductive techniques of Aristotle and Greek thought, in order to apply these methods to the knowledges of Greece, Egypt, Macedonia, Babylonia, and beyond. The location of Alexandria as a center of trade and major exporter of writing material offered vast opportunities for the amassing of information from different cultures and schools of thought.

Entirely new disciplines such as grammar, manuscript preservation, and trigonometry were established. This fortuitious collection of documents in an Egyptian city later allowed the transmission and translation of vital classical texts into Arabic and Hebrew, where they would be preserved long after copies were lost during the Middle Ages in Europe.

Alexandria, together with the Lyceum Academy, and the library at Pergamon, were the prototypes for medieval monasteries and universities. The methods of research, study, and information storage and organization developed in the Library are much the same as those being used today. It was mainly due to the Great Alexandria Library that scholarship in Alexandria flourished, for it was based upon thorough study and an understanding of the value of a past heritage that was deemed worthy of preservation.

The Academy Of Jundishapur
After all, it was the Arabs who brought with them into Spain the Arabic versions of the Greek works, from which translations were made into Latin and spread throughout Europe during its dark ages. This Greek body of knowledge brought Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, or rebirth. The question remains, however: by whom, where, and when was the Greek body of knowledge transmitted to the Arabs themselves?

The Arabs acquired Greek science from two sources:
directly from the Greeks of the Byzantine empire

from Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians of Eastern Persia

By the third century AD, Syriac had already replaced Greek as the literary language of Western Asia. In Jundishapur, the Syriac texts were translated into Arabic, and by the tenth century, almost all the available texts of Greek science were available in Arabic. In his book "How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs", historian De Lacy O'Leary explains:

"Greek scientific thought had been in the world for a long time before it reached the Arabs, and during that period it had already spread abroad in various directions. So it is not surprising that it reached the Arabs by more than one route. It came first and in the plainest line through Christian Syriac writers, scholars, and scientists. Then the Arabs applied themselves directly to the original Greek sources and learned over again all they had already learned, correcting and verifying earlier knowledge."

In his book "Science in Translation", Scott L. Montgomery writes: "To assume that Greek was translated into Arabic still essentially erases centuries of history. What was translated into Arabic was usually Syriac, and the translators were neither Arabs (as the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun admitted) nor Muslims. The real story involves Sanskrit compilers of ancient Babylonian astronomy, Nestorian Christian Syriac-speaking scholars of Greek in the Persian city of Jundishapur, and Arabic and Pahlavi-speaking Muslim scholars of Syriac."

According to tradition, the Academy of Jundishapur in Persia (modern-day Iran) began with the founding of the city by King Shapur I in the third century AD. He is said to have ordered the collection of Greek works on philosophy and medicine, and had them translated into Pahlavi for the academy's library. King Shapur married a Christian princess, the daughter of the Roman Emperor. She arrived with artisans to build and decorate in the style of Constantinople, and with physicians, to assist her in case of illness.

This cosmopolitan city continued to develop as a center of learning and culture for several centuries. In the sixth century, shortly before the rise of Islam, the Academy of Jundishapur reached its peak. In many ways, the center at Jundishapur combined the sum of ancient wisdom at the time, bringing together knowledge from Greek, Roman, Jewish, Syrian, Christian, Persian and Hindu sources. Even Chinese thought, through the Silk Road connection, may have reached there.

Among the scholars at the center were Greek philosophers and teachers who had fled the closed Plato's Academy at Athens. Among the works they brought with them were Euclid's work in mathematics, the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, works by Ptolemy and others. Along with Nestorian scholar-refugees, they held discussions with the king, wrote, taught and translated. These Syriac translators thought it was essential to get as close to the original meaning of the Greek as possible. But, this method led to a style of translation that was virtually word-for-word, doing great injustice to Syriac word order, and later also to Arabic word order when the same technique was used for the first translations into Arabic.

Also brought to the school were Indian scholars working in Sanskrit who discussed moral and ethical teachings, Indian astronomy, and Indian mathematics with its Hindi numerals, which came to the Academy on its way to Muslim lands and later to Renaissance Europe. Combining the scientific traditions of the Greeks, Persians and Indians, it became the most important medical center in the world, continuing its influence into the eleventh century, even during the height of Baghdad's reign as an intellectual center. In fact, the first generation of the Baghdad school were all graduates and scholars of Jundishapur.

When the city of Jundishapur surrendered to Muslim military leaders in 636 AD, the Academy was left undisturbed. After the establishment of the great House Of Wisdom at Baghdad, the importance of Jundishapur was overshadowed and it gradually disappeared.

The House Of Wisdom
By the year 529, the Roman and Byzantine emperors had already destroyed much of the Greek knowledge because of its alleged paganism and differences with Christianity. Great librairies were burnt to the ground: the library in Carthage with 500,000 manuscripts, the library at Pergamus with 200,000 texts, the famous library in Alexandria, Egypt with 700,000 manuscripts, and the Pisistratus in Athens, where only Homer's "Epics" was salvaged. Even the Vatican libraries were raided and Plato's original Academy in Athens closed because it was a hotbed of 'pagan' philosophy.

For the history of Western civilization, the demise of Rome was a turning point. Having reached a high level of classical culture and learning, the fall of Rome was seen as a great decline. In Europe, the time of tumult and so-called barbarian invasions turned a sparkling civilization into forgotten ruins. Learning and culture retreated into fortress-like monasteries, where it moldered for centuries with little improvement. Libraries suffered the same fate. Scrolls and books were lost, and those that were saved from ruin ended up uncataloged and forgotten in dark rooms of monasteries.

Much of the remaining Classical Greek writing did not survive the centuries of neglect that followed. But, while Europe wallowed in the mire of the Dark Ages, Arab scholars translated into Arabic the few Greek texts that remained. Also translated were texts in other languages like Syriac, into which the Greek originals had previously been translated by political and religious refugees who had left Greece for India, Persia and other parts east, including some who had been expelled from Plato's Academy in Athens.

It was in Baghdad that the Muslims founded their great school of translation known as the House of Wisdom. Their formidable ambition was to translate as much as they could find of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, ethics, geography, mechanics, music, medicine, physics, philosophy, the construction of scientific instruments - whatever remained of Classical Greek knowledge.

The first Arabic translations used the same literal style of the Syriac translators. Syriac had evolved as a written language through translations of the New Testament, where it was thought to be essential to get as close to the original meaning of the Greek as possible. This led to a style that was virtually word-for-word translation. The Arabs later abandoned the tradition of literal translation and concentrated on making the sense of the Greek writers comprehensible to the reader. They went back to the original Greek texts and translated them directly into Arabic, revising earlier translations into Syriac and Aramaic.

The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) was started by Caliph al-Mamun in 830 AD. It was the center of Islamic learning, where great translation projects took place to convert the great works of different cultures into Arabic, which went on to become the language of knowledge and learning for many centuries. During Baghdad's golden age there was no censorship or religious bigotry and the Arab elite welcomed influences equally from Indians, Chinese, Christians, Jews and Pagans. The Baghdad school employed a diverse team of Christian and Muslim translators to help translate books from around the world.

One of the House of Wisdom's most famous scholars was Hunayn ibn Ishaq, who eventually translated the entire canon of Greek medical works into Arabic, including the Hippocratic oath. Later becoming the director of the school, Hunayn also wrote at least twenty-nine original treatises of his own on medical topics. One of these was the first known medical work to include anatomical drawings. The book was translated into Latin and for centuries was the authoritative treatment of the subject in both Western and Eastern universities.

Some translators were paid an equal weight of gold to their translated manuscripts. It meant sometimes traveling as far as India to look for original manuscripts and study the mathematics and philosophy of those who had written in classical Sanskrit centuries earlier. The first great advance on the inherited mathematical tradition was the introduction of 'Arabic numerals', which actually originated in India and which simplified calculation of all sorts and made possible the development of algerbra.

This translation of knowledge is considered to be one of the main events of the Middle Ages. The House of Wisdom's main concern was foreign knowledge, and around it the Baghdad School evolved. Great libraries and schools thrived on the works that the translators contributed. The House of Wisdom restored the continuity of human knowledge by learning and translating from the older cultures. Without the ancient knowledge that was preserved and translated through the dark ages of medieval Europe, the Renaissance would not have been possible.

A Passage To India
In "How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs", O'Leary continues his account: "Then there came a second channel of transmission indirectly through India, mathematical and astronomical work, all a good deal developed by Indian scholars, but certainly developed from material obtained from Alexandria in the first place. This material had passed to India by the sea route which connected Alexandria with northwest India. Then there was also another line of passage through India which seems to have had its beginnings in the Greek kingdom of Bactria, one of the Asiatic states founded by Alexander the Great, and a land route long kept open between the Greek world and Central Asia."

The most notable of the Indian translators was the scholar-monk Kumarajiva. By the end of the fourth century, Indian culture had penetrated into China from both the north and south of India, giving Kumarajiva the opportunity to learn Chinese as well as his native Sanskrit. Kumarajiva began working to correct the imperfections of the provincial dialect and later to translating Buddhist texts and correcting earlier translations. A Bureau of Translators was set up under his supervision, with over 800 scholars on staff.

The wealth of India, with its fine cities and prosperous villages, attracted the attention of foreign invaders, including Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia. This was a period of great scientific discovery and intellectual triumph for Sanskrit learning. Brahman language scholars worked out all the major rules regarding the science of language and sounds (phonetics). Sanskrit grammar was standardized and Indian script was formalized, well able to represent all the sounds produced by the human voice.

Some linguists claim that ancient Indian script old Brahmi (or Indus), is a thousand years older than the Phoenician script, currently believed to be the origin of all alphabetic writing. Alphabets believed to be derived from old-Brahmi include Phoenician, Semitic, Aramaic of Taxila, Sabien Hemyaretic, and Greek. In India, Indus developed in two divergent directions: Devanagari in the north, and Ashokan Brahmi, from which derived Bhattiprolu Brahmi in the south. Devanagari is considered one of the most perfect writing systems ever devised.

Indian mathematicians used the number zero (0), and developed the decimal system and the concept of negative numbers. The Hindu numerical notation was then carried to Arabia about 770 AD by a Hindu scholar named Kanka, who taught Hindu astronomy and mathematics to Arabian scholars and, with his help, they translated the material into Arabic. From Arabia, the numerals slowly marched towards the West through Egypt and Northern Arabia, finally entering Europe in the eleventh century.

Art, literature, and philosophy also flourished, providing many fine examples of the genius of ancient India. Indeed, Sanskrit culture was greatly influenced by Western thought and civilization, through contacts with the Greeks, Romans, and Persians. All of these systems eventually came to the attention of the Arab scholars.

The School Of Toledo
In 1085, Toledo, Spain was taken from the Muslims by Alfonso VI of Leon. It soon became the capital of Castile and a community of scholars. There, the transmission of ancient knowledge reached it peak through the School of Toledo where translations were made from Arabic to Latin and later to Spanish, and helped the scientific and technological development for the European Renaissance. Toledo took the place of Baghdad as the new great translation center of the world.

Under the leadership of French Archbishop Raymond, who reigned from 1126 until his death in 1152, the Toledo School's Bureau of Translation attracted first rate scholars from all over Europe. Raymond knew the wealth of knowledge and scientific expertise, which the Muslim world possessed, and desired that Christendom gain access to its riches. Archdeacon Dominic Gundisalvi undertook many translations and directed the Bureau of Translation that Raymond had founded. Among the school's great scholars were Gherard of Cremona, John of Seville, Adelard of Bath, Robert of Chester, Rudolf of Bruges, Hermann of Carinthia, and Michael Scot. The twelfth century came to be known as the Age of Translation.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, scholars such as these had translated the bulk of ancient science into Latin, including the writings of such greats as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and Hippocrates, which had been preserved in Arabic for hundreds of years. These writings were either Arabic translations from Greek, Persian and Indian books or they were written by Muslim scientists themselves as new works.

Also translated were the writings of Muslim intellectual giants who, for generations, had expanded on the Ancient Greek works and written extensive glosses (marginal notes) and commentaries about their translations in their manuscripts. The School of Toledo represented the intellectual door through which this incredible storehouse of knowledge would become known to the West.

Many translators from Arabic into Latin worked alone, however, the usual method of translation was for two scholars to work in tandem. The basic procedure was for one scholar to translate aloud from the Arabic text into the vernacular, and for the second to translate from the vernacular, producing a Latin draft. For example, the translator from Arabic into Castilian (or Catalan) might be a Jew, in which case the other member of the team would be a Christian, typically a cleric. This practice, known as cross-language translation lent characteristic social coloring to the process.

The following text is quoted from Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man", the award-winning 13-part BBC television series covering the history of civilization and science: "When Christianity came to win back Spain, the excitement of the struggle was on the frontier. Here Moors and Christians, and Jews too, mingled and made an extraordinary culture of different faiths. In 1085 the centre of this mixed culture was fixed for a time in the city of Toledo. Toledo was the intellectual port of entry into Christian Europe of all the classics that the Arabs had brought together from Greece, from the Middle East, from Asia."

"We think of Italy as the birthplace of the Renaissance. But the conception was in Spain in the twelfth century, and it is symbolised and expressed by the famous school of translators at Toledo, where the ancient texts were turned from Greek (which Europe had forgotten) through Arabic and Hebrew into Latin..."

A school for translation was also founded in Palermo, Sicily in the thirteenth century similar to the school at Toledo. The two schools established close relations and exchanged books, translations and scientists. Some of the most prominent translators at the Palermo School of Translation were Eugenius of Palermo and Leonardo Pisano. As in Toledo, the translation work at Palermo was mainly concerned with works in mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences. A result of this scientific activity are the thousands of Arabic manuscripts still held today in the Vatican Library in Rome.

The Long Seventh Century
"As the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature - everything they could lay their hands on. Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly re-founded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one - a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be." ("How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe", Thomas Cahill, New York: Doubleday, 1995)

In his book "Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century", historian Michael Richter writes: "Irish society was the first outside the Roman empire to receive Christianity, and to do so in Latin, as was to become customary elsewhere in the West. Since Ireland was spared the upheavals which characterized the post-Roman centuries in Western Europe, Latin learning unfolded there within a context of a vibrant native Irish culture. Because of the use of Latin, Irish Christian culture was accessible to non-Irish scholars."

"Ireland and Spain were the societies with the most dynamic Latin culture during the long seventh century (563-731). Where they differed was that Spain was conquered by the Muslims in the early eighth century with a consequent decline of influence in Europe, whereas Ireland remained largely undisturbed for another 100 years. In this way Ireland emerged as the decisive mediator between late antiquity and the Western Middle Ages."

In 432 AD, Patrick of Ireland arrived from Britain with several of his loyal followers and, for the remainder of his life, worked to convert the natives to Christianity. One of the most profound introductions brought to Ireland by Patrick was the Latin alphabet. Latin had become extinct in Britain as a spoken language, but the shadow of the Roman Empire had never extended to Ireland.

Patrick established monasteries across the country where language and theology could be studied. During the Dark Ages these monasteries served as sanctuaries to many of the Continent's great scholars and theologians. Learning was prized, and the monks had plenty of time for personal study or to learn Latin, and sometimes even Greek. The craft of the written word would be used by Irish monks to translate many important literary works, and to record a great wealth of oral traditions and history.

Great centers of learning were established and students from every corner of Europe flocked to Irish universities to receive their education, including the sons of many of the Anglo-Saxon kings. It was here that the lamp of Latin learning was preserved for the ages. During this age, the great illuminated manuscripts of Ireland were produced. It was the long seventh century; Europe was in the Dark Ages and Ireland was in a period of 'Golden Enlightenment'.

But Ireland's contribution was two-fold. At the same time that Christians were coming to Ireland from abroad, thousands of Irish missionaries - male and female - were leaving their native country to live in Britain and the Continent, in an effort to reconvert a pagan Europe to Christianity. These pilgrims spread classical learning and influence into France, Lombardy and England. From the sixth century onward, Irishmen were busy founding centers of learning, churches, and monasteries all over Europe, and as far east as the Ukraine, as far north as the Faroes, and as far south as Italy. Ireland became synonymous with literacy and learning.

The final linguistic process in Irish took place after Arabic learning was introduced to Ireland in the twelfth century, carried there by returning Irish religious leaders and scholars who had been teaching in the great universities of Europe such as Bologna, Padua and Montpellier. By this time, Irish medical practitioners, who were renown throughout Europe, had adopted Arabic medical ideas. Before 1800, the Irish language actually contained the largest collection of medical manuscript literature surviving in any one language.

"I have never met a person who is not interested in language."
-Steven Pinker

Ten Years That Changed The Perception Of The Translator
(From "The ATA Chronicle", December, 1995) -During the ten years between 1536 and 1546, three famous translators met their death. One was tortured first and then burned at the stake in Paris, the great center of civilization. The second was strangled and then burnt in the city of Antwerp. And even though the third died a natural death, half of Europe longed to see him executed.

In the most dramatic of these cases, the ostensible reason for the translator's execution at the stake was that he had dared to insert three extra words into one of his translations, words which were not clearly present in the original. Étienne Dolet (1509–1546), a French humanist was tried for translating one of Plato's "Dialogues" in such a way as to imply disbelief in immortality. Dolet did in fact add three extra words to a text he was translating from Greek, though many scholars defend their use as adding to the clarity. He was condemned as an atheist, tortured and strangled at the age of thirty-seven; his body was burned with copies of his books at his feet.

The second translator to die for his transgressions was Bible translator and reformer William Tyndale (1494-1536), who was so impressed by Martin Luther's teachings that he created English versions of the Christian texts and the Torah, which he then smuggled into England without the knowledge of King Henry VII. Tyndale was forced to flee England but was eventually arrested in Belgium in 1535, and then imprisoned for a year and a half before being strangled and burned at the stake.

As a translator, Tyndale coined many everyday phrases, including: "Let there be light", "Eat, drink and be merry", "The powers that be", "Ye of little faith", "Am I my brother's keeper", "A man after his own heart", and "Signs of the times". His translation of the Bible is credited with influencing the later "King James" version.

The last of the three 'translator-warriors' was the charismatic and successful Martin Luther (1483-1546) himself, who dared to translate the Bible into German, and the one man so many would have rejoiced to see crucified. In 1540, Luther wrote the self-promoting and nationalistic Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, in which he criticized Latin, Hebrew and other languages for being full of "stones and stumps", compared to his 'smooth' German writing.

As a poet, writer and translator, Luther reformed the German language in ways that can still be felt today. He is often considered the "father of the modern German language." Still, Luther was constantly forced to defend his principles of meaning-oriented translation and he was eventually put under the ban of the Empire. Fearing for his safety, his own friends once kidnapped him to protect him.

Until the passage of these ten pivotal years, translators in the West had been viewed more as heroes than as villains. They had opened all the ancient arts and sciences to the world around them, not only philosophy, astronomy, and geometry but the more advanced range of Arab mathematics, not to mention medicine, optics, and other sciences. They had even opened the door to the enormously popular studies of alchemy, geomancy, and astrology. As Giordano Bruno himself would say: "From translation all science had its off-spring."

After 1546, public attitude began to change and translators were no longer viewed as heroes. Increasing emphasis would be placed on the inadequacy of translators and even the translation process itself, a view which has largely prevailed until the present day.

"When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language."
-John Donne

Ancient Wisdom For The Modern World
Most of the world's past comes to us in translation. "It may not overstate the case," writes L. G. Kelly, "to claim that the history of the world could be told through the history of translation." Some of this history is well charted, as with the translation of the Bible, the work of missionaries, and the Orientalist translators in India, but there remain vast unknown territories. Only recently have scholars begun to write about the role of individual translators."

"At a time when people and ideas, and culture and business, seem to increasingly cross the barriers of language, translation from one language to another becomes a necessary part of the action, with that action being neither transparent nor automatic. Translators make choices about how to move the text across the barriers behind which cultures have evolved characteristic linguistic ways of seeing and thinking, of encoding and protecting their cultures. All throughout history, we can see the creativity of individual translators as they sought to push their texts through filters of culture and language." ("The Journal of American History", Willi Paul Adams and David Thelen, March, 1999)

Indeed, translators have an ancient wisdom.