The Earliest Mentions of Translation

Word translation in general and European translation in particular has a ling and praiseworthy tradition. The earliest mention of translation goes back to aprx the year 3000 BC in ancient Egypt where the interpreters or dragomans were employed to help in carrying on trade with the neighbouring country of India. The dragomans were employed to accompany the trade caravans and help in negotiating, selling and buying the necessary goods for Egypt. Also in those ancient times (2400 BC), the Assyrian emperor Sargon of the city Akkada (Mesopotamia), is known to have circulated his order of the day translated into some lan-s of the subject countries. The emperor boasted of his victories in an effort to intimidate his neighbours. In 2100 BC, Babylon translations are known to have been performed into some lang-s including Greek, Armenian, Egyptian. The city of Babylon in those times was a center of polyglots where translations were accomplished in several lang-s. There existed the first known bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) and multilingual dictionaries. In 1800 BC, in Assyria tere was already smth of a board of translators headed by the chief translator/interpreter, a certain GIKI. The first trade agreement is known to have beeen signed in two lang-s between Egypt and its neighbour Nubia in 1200BC.

Interpreters and tr-s of the Persian and Indian lang-s are known to have been employed in Europe by Alexandr the Great, the emperor of Makedonia, during the military campaign against Persia and India. Romans in their numerous wars also employed interpreters.

The history of European translation goes back to 280 BC with the translation of some excerpts of the Holy Scriptures. The real history of translation into European lang-s is supposed to begun in 250 BC in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. The local leaders of the Jewish community decided to translate the Old Testament from Aramaic (their lang.), which was no longer understood, into ancient Greek, which became their spoken language. 72 learned Jews translated separately for 70 days and their translations became to be identical. This translation was called Septuagint, The bulk of Septuagint is known today to have been word-for –word translation (slavishly literal).

Later on, with the political, economic and military strengthening of the Roman Empire, more and more translations were performed from Greek into Latin. Roman-Greel scholar Livius Andronicus made a successful translation of Homer’s poems, the Iliad and Odyssey in 240 BC, it became the foundation for the rich Latin belles-letters traditions.

Marcus Cicero became a famous in Rome by his literary translations and for principles of sense-to-sense translations(main aim of translator –to convey the sense and the style of the source language text).