History The origins of language around 100,000 years ago and writing around 5000 years ago form the basis for the development of translation. Famous translations often serve as reference points for tracing the course of history. Little is known about the history of translation in cultures outside of Europe, e. g. in the Mediterranean. Similarly, the history of interpreting has not been extensively researched, although interpreting certainly outdates translation, with the exchange of oral information holding greater importance in the past. One of the first instances of translation is from 247 BC when the Septuagint was written, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, which was carried out by 72 translators in 72 days. The inscription on the Rosetta stone, a hieratical decree dated at around 196 BC, is written in two languages and three different scripts: Egyptian in demotic and hieroglyphic script as well as Greek. This multilingual document helped to decipher hierogyphics. Translations have often played a important role in the communication of knowledge between different peoples. It is possible to trace how information flowed by looking at certain periods where numerous translations were being carried out. Ancient Rome was a centre of translation activity, where mainly Greek literature was translated into Latin. Theoretical scriptures about literature and rhetoric have been passed down from this time, which anticipate current debate some centuries later about the values of word-for-word or looser translation. A prominent figure in the history of translation is Hieronymus (ca. 331-429 AD), who was later canonised and is nowadays considered the patron saint of translators. Hieronymus was instructed by Pope Damascus I to complete a translation of the Bible into Latin based on recognised Greek texts. He later translated the Old Testament from Hebrew. For a long time, his Latin version of Bible was the authoratative text for the Roman Catholic church. In the 9th and 10th century Baghdad became another focal point for translation. Scientific works were translated from Greek into Arabic, namely in the House of Wisdom. These translations played an important role in the development of science in Medieval Europe, as it formed the basis for a greater centre of translation, the so-called “Toledo School of translation”. In 12th and 13th century texts of Arabic and Greek origin were translated into Latin, and later into Spanish. The Renaissance period, which began in Italy in 14th century, was marked by its renewed and increased interest in ancient texts, leading to an upsurge in translation, which together with the increased spread of written information thanks to the development of the printing process carried on into the Reformation period. Many reformers were also translators of the Bible, of whom the most well-known in the German speaking world in certainly Martin Luther. Luther argued that the Bible’s content should be printed in the German language so that it could be understood by everybody: in vernacular German, rather than overly sophisticated German, complicated by trying to conform to the grammatical structures of the original language. In his “letter from interpreters” he explains his concept of translation. The Lutherian Bible was of great significance to the development and above all to the standardisation of the German language. Another pivotal epoch for translation in the German speaking world was the Romantic period. Literary translations from different European languages into German played an important role, including the Schlegel-Tiecksche Shakespeare translation still read today. During the Romantic period many intellectuals concerned themselves with the theories behind translation, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The 20th century has witnessed an explosion in specialised translation thanks to the development of international relations as well as an increase in scientific theory, forming the basis for the training of translators and interpreters today. Older translation theories tend towards the opinion that the translator should consider as many possible aspects of the source text (e. g. metaphors and comparisons, patterns of emphasis and thematic progression, sentence structure, linguistic variants such as dialect, socialect, etc. ). More recent theories, on the other hand, call for the various aspects of the source text to viewed with differing priority so that the translation meets the specified demands of the target text reader. These demands are influenced by factors external to the text, such as time and place, intention of the translator, exceptions of the translation’s recipient, conventions for particular texts in the target language and culture etc. (c) finetext Übersetzungen GmbH
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