Each 30 September is celebrated as United Nations (UN) International Translation Day.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of translation.
The UN website explains:
The role of language professionals
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.
Thus, on 24 May 2017, the General Assembly adopted resolution 71/288 on the role of language professionals in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development, and declared 30 September as International Translation Day.
Why 30 September?
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 endeavor 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 learned Latin in school and was fluent in Greek and Hebrew, which he picked up from his studies and travels. Jerome died near Bethlehem on 30 September 420.
UNESCO – Online event
30 September 2024 – 9pm Bangkok time
Under the theme “Translation, an art worth protecting: Moral and Material rights for Indigenous Languages” this event will focus on prominent ethical issues in the context of copyright, data collection and use of translated works. The event will shed light on the practical challenges faced by our multifaceted global community in data collection and translation of Indigenous languages and how they navigate such challenges as per industry norms.
Students are invited to join the live streamed event at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/live/i_kPjttvhL8
The UN website continues:
Multilingualism, a core value of the United Nations
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.
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:
- Editorial and desktop publishing assistants;
- Editors;
- Interpreters;
- Précis-writers;
- Production editors and desktop publishers;
- 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.
Did you know?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds the Guinness World Record as the most translated document. It exists in more than 500 languages.
The United Nations is one of the world’s largest employers of language professionals.
There are six official languages of the UN – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
A delegate may speak in any official UN language. The speech is interpreted simultaneously into the other official languages of the UN.
A UN publication from 2022 observed:
To translate is “to say almost the same thing”, in the words of the Italian writer Umberto Eco.
A whole world is contained in this “almost”.
To translate is to confront the other, the different, the unknown.
It is often the essential prerequisite for those who want to access a universal, multiple, diverse culture.
It is therefore no coincidence that the League of Nations took up the issue in the 1930s, envisaging the creation of an Index Translationum.
Taken over by UNESCO in 1948, this Index allowed the first census of translated works in the world.
Two years later, the Representative Works programme was launched to translate masterpieces of world literature.
UNESCO’s support for the publication last year of a lexicon of words from indigenous languages of Mexico that are untranslatable into Spanish is a continuation of these efforts.
Although their disappearance was predicted as early as the 1950s, translators – who are most often women – have never been as numerous as they are today.
The machines developed in the aftermath of the war have not been able to outdo this behind-the-scenes profession.
Nor have digital translation tools, which have become the standard feature of our globalized conversations, even if they have contributed to transforming the job.
This is because language is more than just a means of communication.
It is that, and much more. It is what written or oral works make of it, contributing to forge what is sometimes called the ‘genius of the language’, which the most powerful applications cannot restore.
For to translate is to question the unconsidered in language, to confront its equivocations, to bring to light the richness, the gaps and the levels of meaning that are revealed in the passage from one language to another.
It also means, through this confrontation with the other, questioning one’s own language, one’s culture, one’s self.
It is therefore essential to preserve the vitality of multilingualism so that everyone can speak and think in their own language.
This is what is at stake in the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032), which draws attention to the critical situation of many languages threatened with extinction.
In an era marked by the quest for identity, translation remains an irreplaceable remedy against withdrawal from others.
For without it, as the Franco-American author George Steiner wrote, “we would live in provinces surrounded by silence.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)