The History of Translation

Translation has played and plays a key role in the development of world culture. It is common to think of culture as national and absolutely distinct. If we begin to examine the impact of literary translation, the possibility of communication beyond anything so confined by geographical location is clear.

A history of world culture from the perspective of translation reveals a constant movement of ideas and forms, 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. India, China, Iraq and Spain have in different ways shaped European culture. India created ties with the Mediterranean in the sixth century BC and medical theories found in Greek thinkers like Plato and Galen originated from India. In ninth and tenth century Baghdad, the scientific and philosophical works of Ancient Greece were translated into Arabic and this learning spread to Europe via Spain which was virtually a Muslim country from the early eighth century for four hundred years.

The transmission 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. A history of translation charts these intersections. They may be rooted in violent historical conflict and imperial expansions but it is never a simple process of translation for appropriation.

Some of the history of translation is well-charted - the translation of the Bible, the work of missionaries, the Orientalist translators in India - but there remain vast unknown territories. Scholars have recently begun to write about the role of individual translators and of individual translators. Translators like Constance Garnett in England or Gregory Rabassa in the United States have been responsible for transforming writing in English by their respective translations of Russian and Latin American fiction. In the wake of new political freedom in Eastern Europe have come translations of best-selling American and English authors.The history of translation is the history of the crucial but often invisible intersections in world culture.