The History of Translation

The first appearances of written texts partial translations exist from 2.000 B.C of the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumerian into Asian languages.

One of the first written evidences of this process was the Rosetta Stone, where was found a recorded text on Egyptian, hieroglyph,demotic and Greek that served to deciphering hieroglyphics different of the period (1799 B.C)

Caliph Al-Mamun built the House of Wisdom to train a translator base, establish terminology, and control translation quality. The right skills flourish best with proper infrastructure and good tools.

After millennia of laborious copying moveable print technology was introduced in the 15th century. It killed off Latin, and created the first multilingual publishing industry. 500 years before, block-printing had been used in Asia to print the Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka.

He was responsible for translating the Bible into German, to expand the sacred writings to others countries. Contributions of Martin Luther

In Europe, Luther’s German translation of the Bible was one of the first great print runs in history. But the explosion of knowledge through printed translation started worrying 17th century Europeans.

The industrial revolution created a demand for business documentation, this devellopment created in turn the need to formalize some of the translation specialities

Since 1940 engineers have been trying to automate the translation process and to aid manual translation mechanically machine translation, machine translation is the process where in theory a translation is performed by a computer program in reality machine translation if often aided by manual pre and post editing unedited machine translation is a free service available online, this produces a translation which is often sufficient to understand the general idea of the source text, however such content can be often more humorous than enlightening.

The electronic computed arrived in the 1950s, not just a number cruncher but a symbol processor. It promised software solutions to almost every translation automation problem. Translators could finally use machines to do the heavy lifting.

Type of manual translation where a person is assisted by a computer software, this can involve a dictionary or grammar software but it usually refers to a series of specialized translation software such as concordance and translation memory has a professional translator should have a good knowledge of the language he is translating from an excellent knowledge of the language he is translating into he should also be familiar with the subject of the source text.