TRANSLATOR’S DAY

On September 30th, we celebrate Translator’s Day in honor of the symbolic father of translation, Eusebius Hieronymus, known throughout history as St. Jerome. Native of Stridon, a territory that now forms part of the ex-Yugoslavia, he was born in the late 300s and lived until the early 400s.
History recognizes this world traveler and scholar of philosophy, language and literature, as the father of translators today. There are two main reasons for this: It was St. Jerome who translated Vulgate - a translation of the Bible into Latin - which, in those times, was a vernacular language. The second reason is that it was he who founded what we now call translation theory. His legacy was expressed in a letter that he wrote to one of his disciples, Pammachius. In this letter, St. Jerome described two types of translation that are opposite to the core: the literal translation, and the “sensual” (because it is the “sense”, the meaning, that is translated), or liberal translation. He claims to adhere to the latter, although he specifies the need to preserve literality when translating the Scriptures: “Do not attempt to render, meticulously, word for word.” His enemies accused him of betraying the original text, and even centuries after his death, translators continued to risk severe punishments due to the interpretations that were drawn from their renditions.
Today we pay homage to the founder of Translation theory, and yet, even fifteen centuries later, the debate regarding literal and liberal translations continues to spark controversy in a time of unprecedented linguistic globalization. In this Era of communications and multi-cultural societies, it is perhaps necessary to remember the simple words of St. Jerome: “I do not express word for word, but sense for sense.”

Miriam Golía
Translator