Translation movement

Peter E. Pormann • August 13, 2019

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Translation is one of the most powerful drivers in the development of science and medicine. From the earliest periods of recorded history until today, translation has played a crucial role in propagating scientific knowledge. The Greeks drew on the know-how of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations, to which they had access through a process of both oral and written translation; a wonderful monument to this transfer from Ancient Egyptian into classical Greek is the famous Rosetta Stone, which contains a decree by the Ptolemies in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Likewise, Roman culture drew heavily on Greek sources and developed its own medical language through translation. For most of the medieval and early modern periods, Latin was the lingua franca in which medicine was taught, discussed, and written about throughout Europe, and it was only through a long process of translation that medical knowledge became accessible in various European vernaculars such as German, French, English, and Russian. Even during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, translations between these vernaculars furthered knowledge transfer and helped promote scientific research and progress. In the early twenty-first century, English emerged as a new scientific lingua franca, playing a similar role to that of Latin during the Middle Ages or Greek in Antiquity.

Arabic also emerged as a lingua franca of scientific exchange during the medieval period as a result of the famous Graeco-Arabic translation movement. On the shores of the Guadalquivir and the Ganges, physicians wrote medical treatises in Arabic. Even in early modern Europe, there was a clear sense that Arabic was the language of science par excellence. For this reason, the Franciscan Friar Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92) advocated the study of Arabic, and John Selden (1584–1654), a prominent lawyer, historian and linguistic scholar, said that ‘the liberal and correctly taught sciences were for a long time called by us ‘the studies of the Arabs’ or ‘Arabic studies’ (Scientiae Liberales ritèque institutae, diù ante vocari solebant a Nostris Studia Arabum & Arabica Studia)’ (quoted in Pormann 2013a, 73). Dimitri Gutas (1998, 8), who studied the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in detail, rightly likened it to classical Athens or Renaissance Italy in importance and impact. What then was this great movement that so profoundly shaped the fates and fortunes of countless human beings?

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