Day of the translator

Every year on the last day of September, the Day of the translator is celebrated - a professional holiday of all those who own this very popular specialty.

By itself, the Day of an interpreter is quite a young holiday. After all, it began to celebrate only since 1991.

Then the International Federation, which unites more than a hundred associations of interpreters from around the world, celebrated it as the International Day of the Translator.

This profession has long been considered one of the most sought after and respected. No one knows exactly where and when the first translators appeared. Some believe that they, judging by the biblical stories, appeared when a very angry god decided to destroy the Tower of Babel, which the people, having become proud, decided to build up to the sky. It was then that God deprived humanity of the possibility of unified communion. And people who suddenly ceased to understand each other, quarreled and dispersed throughout the world.

The day of the interpreter was appointed on September 30, not by accident: in 420 AD, the patron of earthly translators, one of the Latin fathers of the Holy Church, Jerome of Stridon, died on that day. The Holy Father, as recognized by the world community, has made an undeniable contribution to the development of translation as a science. It was he - the outstanding genius of his time, historian, writer, first translated into Latin the Bible - the Vulgate.

The fate of this man is interesting: he traveled all the time, made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, lived for several years a hermit in the desert of Chalcidia, studying among the "scorpions and wild beasts" the Chaldean and Hebrew languages. As Jerome of Stridon himself said, he often heard the pipes that foreshadow the Last Judgment.

Among historians, there is an opinion that the first translators appeared in Egypt. Their existence is documented. It is known that Ancient Egypt has always been a great state, which was famous not only for its military campaigns, but also for doctors, philosophers, seafarers, etc. Information Egyptians drew from everywhere, collecting it in different lands, from different peoples. And it is quite logical that all this would be just useless occupation, if in Egypt there would be no talented people - translators who could intelligently translate any valuable manuscript into their native language.

Great was the role of translators in Ancient Greece, which at one time had a fairly active trade exchange with the eastern states. Thanks to the Greeks, the world could see many editions of the Bible, because a significant part of the Old Testament could only be preserved in their translations.

In Ancient Rus, interpreters were called interpreter. Initially, their vocation was to help foreigners who bought goods at the fair. And then, from the time of Peter's rule, to the staff of the order responsible for the relations between the states, they were introduced as those who can intelligently interpret - so that the rest could be understood.

Without an interpreter, not a single military action was carried out. On May 21, 1929, the decree established the title of "military interpreter", thereby legitimizing this already very long-standing profession.

And in 2000, on the initiative of the graduates of the Institute of Foreign Languages, on May 21, the Day of the Military Translator was established, which today is considered not only by those who wear shoulder straps, but also by civil experts.

The military interpreter was the first at the front to learn about the actions of the enemy, it was on him that he was responsible for the accuracy and correctness of the translation of those data, on which the lives of so many people could depend in the future.

A. Pushkin considered the translators to be the "post horses of progress", because their significance in our life, though imperceptibly, is very important.

Every year in the world, the Day of an interpreter is celebrated under a certain motto, the one that is especially relevant this year.