Esit Traducciones blog
The Translation of Originary Languages I
Let us first reflect about translation.
Translation has existed since languages separated from each other with migrations from our common cradle in Africa and when, subsequently, the speakers of those languages had to start communicating with each other.
This gave rise to lingua francas, pidgins, creoles, which are also the foundation for the development of new languages, and of oral liaison translation. Only thousands of years later, writing would appear in some societies and still much later would written translation.
A monopoly of the privileged educated classes, writing enabled the development of philosophy, literature and science. But how were all these nurtured by new ideas that were not always local? Thanks to translation!
And then it would be good to ask ourselves about the concept of originary languages, the present term replacing the aboriginal or indigenous languages denomination that refers to the languages of various societies around the world that coexist with the societies and languages that developed writing thousands of years ago. But guess what… at first they were all native languages, and all, without exception, have changed over time. So, the question is, how is translating between languages such as English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian different from translating between English and Navajo or between Spanish and Aymara, or between French and Swahili?
A mystery to be solved in our next post!