The first translations in Arabic were in the time of Syrians, when the population was primarily pagan. Syrians were influenced by Greeks in their translation methods and prefer the content to the form of translation. One of the greatest translators in Arabic world was Zaid ibn Thabit known as a personal writer of Muhammad’s words. He became famous helping to spread Qur’an to non-Muslims and recording different Qur’an verses. It is known that he noted the versions of Qur’an from Muhammad that were sent to him from Allah with the help of Angel Gabriel, and Zaid ibn Thabit had the honor to write the holy texts for Muslims and translate it to the other people. After Muhammad’s death, he had right to collect all the information that was available in oral and written form and formed the full volume of Qur’an. Before his death, Zaid ibn Thabit gave the saved material to his wives to memorize the Qur’an. His style of translation is known to be oriented on the context and the meaning as it was the main aim of that time period. The notion of translation beauty was neglected.
Also, among the greatest translators of the Arab world I should mention Al-Jahiz. He made essential contribution into the philology, lexicology, and translation. His translation works were connected with Greek culture and philosophy, he translated Aristotle’s work into Arabic, and his main interest was Arabic literature. His life was in the period of educational revolutions in Arab Islamic Caliphate, and he worked and developed his theories under the Caliph’s protection. His main feature was that in his translations, he paid a lot of attention to the revisions and strived to the maximum equivalency between languages. According to Marouane Zakhir, Al-Jahiz believed that the translator should know the structure of the speech, habits of the people and their ways of understanding each other.
The third great Arabic translator is Hunayn ibn Ishaq. He was born in Iraq in 809; from the early childhood he studied different languages and medicine. He translated mostly Greek texts into Syrian and Arabic, he translated a pharmaceutical handbook. This book was the basis of medicine useful for beginners to study discipline. He translated also works in religion, architecture and mostly medicine. His style differs from translators of that period, as he preferred to translate not equivalently word-by-word, but to interpret the meaning. His input into the development of the translation and medicine was fundamental for that period.
The History of English Translation of the Bible
In the western world translation also was relevant. With the development of the Christianity, in 1380 John Wycliffe promoted the idea that people should have an opportunity to read Bible in their native language. He is believed to be the first English translator of Bible (He translated it into Middle English). His form of translation was negatively accepted by church, it was considered to be vulgar. However, the motives of the Catholic Church to ban the ideas of Wycliffe were more personal. Wycliffe stated that church has too much rights and influence on the society, while people should communicate with God through their inner thoughts, and they have right to see and understand Bible not through the prism of church, but to read in English. He had a lot of followers, and then his followers formed Protestantism. Latin language was the language of church, and it became so corrupt that even Gospel written not in Latin could be a reason to be killed. John Colette, Erasmus and William Tyndale faced a lot of difficulties on their way to fight with corrupted Vulgar Latin. With the help of Martin Luther, Tyndale printed New Testament in commonly known English language. It was a catastrophe to Church, as Bible was understandable to everyone and church’s influence was considerably disturbed. Myles Coverdale continued the work of his predecessors and translated Old Testament into English and improved the new one. In 1539 Thomas Cranmer helped Coverdale to publish the Bible. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church, chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in plain English. In 1560, the first complete Bible was published.
A long period of time translation was not determined as a discipline. People only interpreted words from one language into another until the 20th century, when the international communication became so important that professionals in different cultures and languages were needed. Cicero, Herodotus, Jerome were the translators in different countries and epochs. In the middle of the 20th century, translation as a discipline appeared in University of Iowa, as a part of studying philology. Nowadays translation is a developing discipline with a lot of theories and practice approaches. Translator is a person that not only knows a language but also understands the foreign people and their culture. Cultural factors determine the appropriateness and quality of the translation, therefore, cross-cultural awareness is one of the norms to evaluate an oral translator.
Types of Translation
Translation is mostly divided into oral and written. Translation may be literal and non-literal. Oral translation can be simultaneous or consecutive. Oral translation is often considered to be non-literal if simultaneous. Written translation is easier than oral, as the translator has more time and ability to find the right word and built proper phrase. Translation can be divided into mechanical and human. Mechanical translation always means a computer or a translation program. Mechanical translation has a lot of defects, as it does not take into account the situation, may not recognize idioms, phrases, or translate them non-literally. Mechanical translation is always written and non-literal. The principle of working is the search of equivalent, word-to-word translation. Machine translation means that the program will search the words in electronic vocabularies; it is useful as it can be post-edited by a human. Also there is a computer-assisted translation, when a machine does the whole translation and the translator corrects the mistakes, and as a result machine assists the human.
Interpreting can be simultaneous or consecutive. Simultaneous interpreting is the hardest type, because there is no time to search a word, translator should master language and speak fluently, it influences the quality. Often super essay translators use not word-by-word meaning of the words, but sense-to-sense. Someone can argue that the quality of translation suffers from such changes, but qualified professional would do everything to select needed word and construct sentence. Also, in the 21st century sight translation appeared. It is a type of translation, less formal, when the interpreter needs to explain orally to the targeted audience what was said in the source. Central to sight translation are the following skills: the ability to comprehend written text in one language (reading skills) and the ability to produce an oral or signed rendition in another language (speaking or speech production skills).
