Each 30 September is celebrated as United Nations (UN) International Translation Day.

As the UN website explains,

International Translation Day is meant as an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation, contributing to development and strengthening world peace and security.

Transposition of a literary or scientific work, including technical work, from one language into another language, professional translation, including translation proper, interpretation and terminology, is indispensable to preserving clarity, a positive climate and productiveness in international public discourse and interpersonal communication.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books that are translated into Thai from a variety of languages, as well as books translated from different languages into English.

The date of 30 September was chosen to celebrate translations because it is associated with Saint Jerome, a saint in the Roman Catholic church, who translated the Bible from the original Hebrew to the Latin language about 1600 years ago. The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a year of worship by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of the saint. The English word feast usually means a large meal, but in the case of saints, it refers to an annual religious celebration or day dedicated to a specific saint.

In Western art, Saint Jerome is often shown with a lion, because according to an old story, he was lecturing to students one day in Bethlehem when a lion limped over to him. Although the students ran away in fear, Jerome was happy to see the lion and took a thorn out of its foot that was bothering it. The lion was so pleased that it became a household pet to Saint Jerome.

As the UN website notes,

30 September celebrates the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator who is considered the patron saint of translators.

St. Jerome was a priest from North-eastern Italy, who is known mostly for his endeavour of translating most of the Bible into Latin from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. He also translated parts of the Hebrew Gospel into Greek.

He was of Illyrian ancestry and his native tongue was the Illyrian dialect. He learnt Latin in school and was fluent in Greek and Hebrew, which he learnt from his studies and travels.

Jerome died near Bethlehem on 30 September 420.

Every year since 2005, the United Nations invites all its staff, accredited permanent missions staff and students from select partner universities to compete in the UN St. Jerome Translation Contest, a contest which rewards the best translations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish as well as German, and aims to celebrate multilingualism and highlight the important role of translators and other language professionals in multilateral diplomacy.

About the UN St. Jerome Translation Contest

Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, social integration, education and development, are of strategic importance for people and the planet.

There is growing awareness that languages play a vital role in development, in ensuring cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, but also in attaining quality education for all and strengthening cooperation, in building inclusive knowledge societies and preserving cultural heritage, and in mobilizing political will for applying the benefits of science and technology to sustainable development.

An essential factor in harmonious communication among peoples, multilingualism is also regarded by the United Nations General Assembly as a core value of the Organization. By promoting tolerance, multilingualism ensures effective and increased participation of all in the Organization’s work, as well as greater effectiveness, better performance and improved transparency.

TU Students who are interested in foreign languages might consider the possibility of working as a UN translator in the future:

Translation at the UN

The United Nations is one of the world’s largest employers of language professionals. Several hundred language staff work in UN offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi, or at the United Nations regional commissions in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Geneva and Santiago.

Translators are one type of language professionals employed at the UN.

UN language specialists include:

• Copy preparers/proofreaders/production editors;
• Editors;
• Interpreters;
• Reference assistants and;
• Terminologists;
• Translators;
• Verbatim reporters.

United Nations translators handle all kinds of documents, from statements by Member States to reports prepared by expert bodies. The documents they translate cover every topic on the United Nations agenda, including human rights, peace and security, and development. New issues arise every day.

UN documents are issued simultaneously in the six official languages of the Organization (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). Some core documents are also translated into German. This multilingual documentation is made possible by United Nations translators, whose job is to render clearly and accurately the content of original texts into their main language.

Interested in working as a language specialist at the United Nations? Please check UN Careers on Competitive examinations for language professionals

Other TU students who are interested in translation from the point of view of linguistics should find it helpful to consult the TU Library’s collection of books on the theory of translation.

All TU students know about the TU Master of Arts program in English-Thai Translation as well as The Translators and Interpreters Association of Thailand.

Suggestions for further reading

Since translations into English vary widely in quality, TU students may be interested in looking at books owned by the TU Library that were translated by acclaimed translators. For example, the American poet Richard Howard has translated hundreds of books from the French language. The TU Library owns several of these translations.

Others not in the collection of the TU Library may be borrowed by students from the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.

Another famous American translator is Stephen Mitchell, who has translated from different languages, including Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Greek.

Still another much-praised translator into English whose work is in the collection of the TU Library is the Englishman Michael Hamburger. The Poems of Paul Celan, a modern German poet, as translated by Michael Hamburger, are shelved in the General Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus.

Another translator, William Arrowsmith, specialized in the Latin and Green languages, and his books are also represented in the TU Library collection.

Here are some thoughts about translation:

• Translation is at best an echo.

George Borrow, Lavengro (1851)

• No man is capable of translating poetry, who, besides a genius to that art, is not a master both of his author’s language and of his own; nor must we understand the language only of the poet, but his particular turn of thoughts and expression, which are the characters that distinguish, and as it were individuate him from all other writers. When we are come thus far it is time to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to give his thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or, if not, to vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance.

John Dryden, Preface to Ovid’s Epistles (1680)

• The translator of a poem is only a transient mediator… in time all translations fall away, fade, become literary curiosities, time-bound and largely of scholarly rather than literary interest.

Burton Raffel, The Art of Translating Poetry (1988)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)