or we are interconnected much closer than we think
Most of us would agree that the main role of translators is to help in communication. It has been so for millennia. So much so that frequently we are unaware of how much of our current store of knowledge we owe to translators.
I remember how surprised I was to learn that a significant part of Greek literature, including works of philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, had been practically lost to European culture and was recovered after several centuries from their Arabic translations. In the case of Aristotle, it includes such crucial works as “Metaphysics,” “Nicomachean Ethics,” and “Politics.” In the case of Plato, some of his dialogues survived in original Greek or were translated directly into Latin, but crucial works such as “Republic” would be lost to us without their Arabic translation.
It seems that Europe owes much more to the Islamic Golden Age than we could expect.
But the reverse is also true. I am working on an article on the history of machine translation, and several authors in that field point to the achievements of Arabic scholars. For example, the original works of the inventor of the method of cryptanalysis by frequency analysis, Al-Kindi, were lost to Islamic scholars and survived only in the Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona from the influential Toledo School of Translators. Without their translations into Latin, we would irrevocably lose the works of both Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Al-Razi (Rhazes); instead, they became standard medical texts used in Europe for centuries.
This role of translators as preservers of culture is not limited to relations between Europeans and Arabs. For example, the great treasure of Buddhism, the famous “Diamond Sutra,” originally written in Sanskrit, is known to us only thanks to its translation into Chinese.
So even when we work, as translators, on yet another menial task, it is nice to know that we follow in the footsteps of giants, and who knows, maybe we too have a chance of making a mark on our own.