HISTORY OF

TRANSLATION
in the
WESTERN WORLD

From Babel

Story of Babel
People believe that translation
started from the tower of Babel.
In this time, the number languages
increase in diversion.
People started to look for ways to
communicate, hence the birth of
translation

There is a continuity of
intellectual expression from
Ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle
Ages, through to the Renaissance,
the Reformation, and the rise of
the early European nation states.

191 B.C
Greek people and Romans
became the victims of
mistranslation.
It started the conflict between
the Greek language and the
Roman language.

100 or so earlier
The Romans had themselves
fallen victim to their own poor
language skills.
Due to the lack of knowledge of
the Greek language as well

281 B.C
Roman ambassadors were sent to
the Greek city of Tarentum in
Southern Italy with the hope of
negotiating with them.
Unfortunately, the Greeks
mocked the Romans for their
limited knowledge of the Greek
language.

Years passed, an ex-slave from the

same city named Livius Andronicus
was to provide Rome with its first
literary translation, Homers Odyssey.

This lead to the inclusion of

translation in Roman culture, a
culture which developed its literature
via translation and incorporation of
texts produced by one of its colonial
subjects, Greeks.

Ancient
Mediterranean

The Mediterranean, is said to be the

perfect metaphor of how different
languages overlapped.
Roman solved this conflict through
the use of Latin.

Rise of European
Nation

Rise of Latin
Language

Central language of the scholars

The word translation itself
derives from Latin meaning to
bring or carry across.
It is the basis of languages.

Modern Translation
Saint Jerome, the patron saint of
Translation, produced a Latin
Bible in the 4th century A.D.
This led to the formation of the
Protestantism due to disparities
between versions of crucial
words and passages.

References:
http://www.arts.canterbury.ac.nz/cla
ssics/documents/com-hist.pdf
http://www.textjournal.com.au/april0
4/aveling.htm
http://www.translationdirectory.com/a
rticles/article1695.php
http://www.languagerealm.com/articles
/history-of-translation.php