So close yet so far
a. what does it mean?
b. seriously what it is?
c. yes it's talking about language and translation
d. I'm still rambling at this point
It has merely been 15 years since the first time I have ever touched the topic of translation. Sure, my late dad was one ever since I was a kid, and I hugely got inspirations from him that I inherited the spirit now, but first time I actually translated something was fifteen years ago.
How old am I now? Not too old—just average, middle-aged. Not even three-fiddy but my aching back tells it’s probably somewhere around few hundreds. That’s what you get after not moving your body enough. By the time I’d have been an old man (in a couple of years bet), there’ll be some creaky and sqeaky sounds whenever I move.
Still in topic, it is MERELY 15 years, compared to the first ever recorded official translation conducted in the 3rd century, on the Holy Bible. That was around 1800 years ago. Obviously a lot more older non-recorded documents and practices, such as the first ever overregional journey to create the first ever creole, the lost Epic of Gilgamesh, all of them were great examples but not until the Bible where translation critics and analysis actually started.
Umm… we’ll talk about this at another time, when it’s an article rather than this fairly worse-written blog.
In essence, translation has been around for almost two millenia and no matter how advanced machinery would even attempt take over, translations will never change.
Sometimes I even wonder if it is an innovation at all…