International Translation Day

Sunday, September 30th, is International Translation Day. Why are there no Hallmark cards to celebrate?! It’s insulting, really. I think we translators deserve to have our own day, too. *wide grin*

Below are shamelessly plagiarized sections from an article you can read in its full glory at http://www.translators.org.za/indexes/english/jerome/jerome-history.html. [My comments look like this.]

St Jerome, the bible translator, has always been considered to be the patron saint of translators and interpreters throughout the world. For a long time, the days and weeks around 30 September have therefore been used by translators and interpreters and their associations to celebrate the occasion. In 1991 the Public Relations Committee of the International Federation of Translators (FIT) launched the idea of an International Translation Day.

[What, you say? You don’t think translation affects you?]

- Imagine how difficult it would be to assemble furniture or bicycles, or to use video recorders, that you bought in a kit if the instructions were not translated (and everybody knows what problems badly translated assembly instructions can cause).
- People with allergies to specific products would be at a risk if the ingredients on product labels were not translated.
- Well-translated labels, instructions and marketing material can enhance a company's image, while faulty translations will certainly do a company's reputation no good!

FIT’s 1993 press release on the occasion of International Translation Day 1993 gave some interesting statistical figures. Examples:

- Did you know that the Bible has been translated into 310 languages, and some text passages of the Bible into as many as 1 597 languages?
- Did you know that the works of Lenin have been translated more often than Shakespeare's dramas (321 compared to 93), and that Jules Verne was published in more languages than Karl Marx (238 against 103)?

Those were the figures in 1993. [Who knows what they are now, and I'd like to see how Karl Marx compares to the Harry Potter books.]