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  • 26 - Translation before the Christian Era

  • from Part VI - Translation in History
  • Edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, University of Leicester
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Translation
    Published online:
    10 March 2022
    Print publication:
    17 March 2022, pp 521-536

  • Summary

    Chapter 26 discusses the role of translation in the years before the birth of Christ in Ancient Egypt, the Near and Middle East, Ancient Greece and Rome, and China. Despite the difficulties of finding texts in translated form stemming from a time when writing was generally limited to stone inscriptions and papyri, many of which have been lost, discoveries made since the 1900s in areas such as Egypt or the Iranian plateau have demonstrated that the practice of translation was not unknown. They reflect that the aims of translating into foreign languages were in no way different from the reasons why translation has been used in modern times: conquest, trade, dissemination of religious beliefs, and literary appropriation or adaptation.