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Language translation is not only about translating words in a given language into another. It goes beyond that, if one thinks about it carefully and mulls over the role language translation has played over the history of mankind one will realize that language translators have been instrumental in making alien cultures intelligible. If one takes into account the influence of the King James Bible on the English speaking world then one can safely conclude that the translators who worked on translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek to English have also been responsible for shaping up their culture and history.
However it’s hugely ironical that a great-to-good translation usually goes unnoticed simply because the translator has captured the spirit and language of the original so well that the translated version seems to have been the original work. In fact there are many translated works that are revered as great works of literature on their own right. Apart from the King James Bible they are The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Arabian Nights, C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s English translations of Proust and August Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck’s German translations of Shakespeare.
Considering all this it is quite heartening to see translators being honored through events like the Times Literary Supplement’s Translation prize. Some of the works honored this year include The Accordionist’s Son by Bernardo Atxaga which was translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa and Burning Secret, a novella written by Stefan Zweig and translated from German by Anthea Bell.
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