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Importance of Translation

To many people, translation seems like a trivial thing.

But throughout the ages, it is impossible to know the number of lives that the issue of translation has cost. Of course there are probably millions of people who have died in wars that were caused, in some part, by poor translation of communications between countries. However, there is also a significant number of people who have died for the cause of translation.

In religion, people’s feelings are often very strong and passions can rule the actions of the people who run institutions. William Tyndale in England in the 1500s translated much of the Bible into the language of his people from the original Greek and Hebrew. This act of devotion to get the holy book into the hands of common people cost him his life, as he was killed and declared a heretic. About 100 years later, much of his work was used by scholars, in addition to other sources to come up with the King James Version of the Bible. The church leaders in England in Tyndale’s time were so opposed to him translating the Bible because they worried that mistakes would mislead the faithful. At that stage people were not yet aware of the importance of translation.

Islam also has strict rules about the reading of their holy book, the Qu’ran. The official stance of most Muslim leaders is that the Qu’ran in any language except for Arabic is an approximate translation and representation; In this case the importance of translation is not considered. The Arabic version is the only one that should be used for official decrees or rules. Multiple English translations exist, because of the growing Muslim communities in English speaking countries. These, however, according to scholars, are nothing more than a tool to help one understand the one and true version in Arabic. Many translators, faced with the challenge of conveying not only text, but more importantly meaning, are forced to do an immense amount of study of the context. Because there are different interpretations, they also have to pick which ancient and modern scholars they will follow in the translation to get an Orthodox translation.

So what is the importance of translation? You can see for yourself that for matters of the heart or for matters of law, qualified and professional translation is essential .