Happy ITD!

By TOBY LICHTIG

Today is International Translation Day. Merry rendering one and all, and hats off to an often undervalued and generally underpaid profession. And why September 30? Ah, because today is also the feast of St Jerome and St Jerome is, informally at least, the patron saint of translators.

Born in today’s Croatia, around 347, Jerome studied Greek and Latin in Rome, and later Hebrew. Appointed papal secretary by Pope Damascus I, he was asked to provide a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Latin, and later translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin, creating, in both versions, what came to be known as the Vulgate. He died in Bethlehem in 420.

International Translation Day was launched in 1991 by the International Federation of Translators (FIT) – a body that has been running since the 1950s. This year’s theme is “language rights”. “There is a wide range of situations in which human rights may be threatened if people are not able to exercise their language rights”, argues FIT’s President Dr Henry Liu in his message to mark the day.

“Think about immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, tourists and those working abroad. What happens if they fall ill and need to consult a medical specialist, unwittingly break a law, need to apply for social services or are involved in a dispute with an employer? How can they exercise their rights when they cannot even communicate their most basic needs and circumstances because they are forced to use a language they do not speak or write? This is where interpreters, translators and terminologists – all language professionals – play an essential role.”   

Here at the TLS we like to think we do our bit for translators, and translations – especially those of a more literary nature. In this week’s edition – out on Friday – we will be publishing reviews of three novels in translation: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, which our reviewer, Ruth Scurr, declares to be the author’s “most tender” book since Norwegian Wood; F by Daniel Kehlmann, which is hailed by John Burnside as a “masterpiece” (not a word we tend to use too often in the TLS but one that certainly seems justified here); and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third novel in Elena Ferrante’s acclaimed tetralogy about the friendship between two women from a poor neighbourhood in Naples (our critic, Christina Petrie, is not left disappointed).

Coming up over the next few weeks, we will also be publishing pieces on writers in translation including Andrés Neuman, Joan Sales, Gaito Gazdanov, Ippolito Nievo, Juan Marsé, Per Petterson, Jérôme Ferrari, Kamal ben Hameda, Eric Chevillard, André Gide  and Irène Némirovsky.

But for now let’s raise a glass to the various translators who have made their books available in English and without whom the global delights of literature would be a very monochrome affair.