Today, Lingoblog celebrates Hieronymus Day (international translation day). Hieronymus (347-420), sometimes referred to as Jerome, was a Roman theologian who is considered to be the first person to translate the Bible into Latin. He is also considered patron saint to translators, librarians and encyclopedist. Cover photo: Painting of Hieronymus by Michelangelo da Caravaggio, 1606.
I have been teaching translation theory at Aarhus University for more than ten years. The class was called “Challenges of translation theory: past, present and future” and it focused on a presentation — and sometimes a critic — of translation theory since the symbolic references of Cicero and Saint Jerome. The class was co-created by my colleague, Merete Birkelund, who is a linguist.
The aim of the class was to study and reflect about the many roles of translation in history, science, culture, religion, literature, etc. We didn’t focus only on literary translation, as many programs do, but, on the contrary, sought to make the students aware of the often invisible presence of translation in our everyday life. We considered that our role was to expose students to the incredible variety of translation’s identities and purpose.
I was in charge of the historical, cultural and philosophical aspects of translation theory, while Merete focused on linguistics and all its fields of application. There were no practical applications per se, I.e. no real “translation” exercises, but rather group discussions and reflections about particular case-studies during the workshops.
We had between 15 to 40 students each year, coming from all different backgrounds and studies. As the classes were taught in English, we also enjoyed the presence of many exchange students, which made the discussions even more interesting.
I truly enjoyed teaching these classes (which unfortunately were canceled this year due to budget cuts) because they gave me the opportunity to develop my own thoughts through the often fascinating input from the students. Translation has been a crucial part of my life since I was a child, as I am completely bilingual in French and in English, having spent my early years in the United States. I have therefore also worked as a literary translator and even sometimes translate my own fiction.
By confronting my students to theories about language (any translation theory being a language theory), I also had to confront my own prejudices and misconceptions about the field — about Eurocentrism, gender problematics, translation value, to name a few. Translation, I learned, like language, never ceases to evolve and to morph into new shapes and tools — sometimes meeting a staunch resistance within the milieu itself. To me, it appeared that being a translator was all about being flexible and open-minded, and that language was quite a complicated tool, which changed identity with each user.
Finally, the ultimate lesson might be that translation is at the heart of absolutely every academic and technical field, and that its literal ghosting by most universities (including mine) is a terrible mistake: translation is the ultimate and necessary key to knowledge. Try to imagine our world for one second without translation, and you would see a gigantic collapse of information, science and culture. I strongly support the idea that translation studies should be a mandatory part of the academic curriculum, and not only in the humanities. To understand how language works with language is to comprehend how knowledge is built over the ages, and keeps on being built.
Sébastien (Seb) Doubinsky is associate professor in the French department of the University of Aarhus, Denmark. His research fields cover translation theory, reading theory and speculative fiction. He is also an established bilingual novelist and poet. His dystopian novel, “Missing Signal”, published by Meerkat Press, won the Bronze Foreword Reviews Award in the Best Science-Fiction Novel category in 2018.
Phon-phon for phun 
Conlang-week in Aarhus 
Learning about language by creating a language – a fun and creative approach to teaching linguistics 
On Friday the 10/02, Noam Chomsky will give a lecture at ViGør in Aarhus 
Conlangs & Computer Games, part 4: What Does the Fox Say? 
Prepare for: LingoSlam 2025!!!!!