Have you ever wondered how or where translation came to be in the first place? Yes, there was a time before written languages existed. Translation was therefore unnecessary!
The translation’s history
Signs and symbols were the first forms of written communication. It developed into character-based alphabets that depicted the phonemes of regional tongues. Languages clashed when human groupings began to disperse throughout time. A means of communication had to exist between them. Interpreters and translators provided the answer.
A need for document translation arose in the early days of translation and had to be done by hand. This was usually done with a team of people who could speak two languages. To have materials published, they would labor word by word, phrase by phrase, for months or even years.
The development of translation
It is believed that the necessity to draft agreements between nations and nationalities served as the primary catalyst for the development of good translation. Over time, translation’s focus has expanded from merely legal and commercial issues to include cultural, artistic, and religious topics. The major cities in the area quickly saw the development of translation centers. Numerous monasteries were renowned for their exceptional translation skills. In actuality, the entire Bible was translated into Latin by St. Jerome alone, for which he is highly regarded. The ability to translate during the Roman and Greek eras became greatly sought after in the west.
Translation has existed in the eastern world since more than a millennium BC. The famous Zhou period remark, “translation is to replace one written language with another without changing the meaning for mutual understanding,” is attributed to Jia Gongyan. This demonstrates that the necessity for and awareness of the significance of sound translation principles existed even 3,000 years ago.
The Indian Buddhist teachings were translated into Chinese fifteen hundred years later. One of the first instances of localization is shown here, as Chinese translators adapted Buddhist principles from India into aspects of Chinese culture that would appeal to the intended audience.
Although translation was primarily focused on religion at the beginning of the 20th century, Yan Fan introduced western commerce, technology, and thought to the Chinese people. The majority of Chinese translations were converted from Japanese to Chinese before Yan Fan.
The printing press’s invention improved translation uniformity. The documents just needed to be translated once, typeset, and then repeatedly executed. Admittedly, there was no quick solution to fix mistakes in the translation. Translations into one language have frequently served as the model for translations into other languages. If a translation was done incorrectly, the consequences become worse with each new translation.
Up until the late 20th century, there were two fundamental obstacles to translation: the lack of consistency among translators and the small number of direct language pairs in translations, which frequently required the use of pivot languages. Computers in the late 20th century revolutionized the area.
Even the most sophisticated computers can’t match a human translator’s accuracy; however, they can guarantee translation consistency by using cross-checking software.
These days, translations into hundreds of languages may be performed almost instantly using two competing algorithms: rule-based translations and statistical machine translation.
Rule-based translations convert words from one language to another using grammatical rules and word-for-word lexeme substitutions. Future translations are based on data gathered from past translations of words, phrases, and sentences by statistical algorithms.
The majority of translation services have instant translation capabilities, and Google Translate may be accessed for free online. Although these translators don’t offer accurate translations, they do demonstrate the amazing progress that has been made in the subject. There are also services like DocTranslator, which provide accurate and fast translation of nearly any type of document in more than 100 languages. The development of such services reduced the need of proofreading and double-checking the translated text, but not eliminating it completely.
Through the use of specialized glossaries and translation memory, software has also been able to expedite the translation process. As a result, reliable translations can be used and kept in a database under the supervision of a professional translator. While not immediate, the procedure expedites the translation process and enhances the consistency of translated language throughout a document or set of papers.
From here on, where will the translation go?
The future of translation is really exciting, with computing power growing virtually everyday and the amount of information discovered worldwide increasing at an exponential rate. Globally, tremendous advancements in every discipline are documented in hundreds of different languages. A large portion of the data is available online, but how can it be shared if it is recorded in languages that are incompatible? The Semantic Web is a concept that holds the key to the solution.
The Semantic Web handles the real-time translation of multilingual web content to enable global information retrieval and searches, independent of the language used in the query or the material itself. Since there are more than 6,800 languages spoken worldwide and many of them employ distinct scripts, the idea is still a ways off.
There’s also the notion that web pages will have voice interaction in addition to text. The texts on the pages would automatically adapt to the speaker’s language. Put differently, an automated voice would welcome you to the website of a medical components seller. The website would instantly switch to a Hindi-scripted page if you responded to the greeting in that language. The page would automatically reformat itself into Japanese if you responded in that language, and so on. Some are attempting to expedite the procedure even more by combining voice search services like Siri with page displays.
Throughout the past few millennia, translation has advanced significantly. Seeing where it goes from here is going to be quite exciting. One thing is for sure, no matter where it ends up. There is always going to be a need for high-quality translations in this global environment.
