Every year on September 30 many countries celebrate the professional holiday of translators.

On 24 May 2017, the UN General Assembly declared 30 September as International Translation Day to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, and strengthening world peace and security.

On this day in 420 St. Jerome died. He translated Bible into Latin and was considered the patron saint of translators. It is his phrase in the title: “In translation I transpose a thought, not a word”.

Alexander Pushkin called translators “post horses of progress”, and that is no exaggeration, since many masterpieces of literature and cinema, achievements of science and technology would be unknown, interpersonal communication of different nations would be impossible if not translators.

In Russia the origin of translation goes back to Cyril and Methodius known as devisers of Glagolitic alphabet. Great impact was given by the Christianization of Rus in 988 which entailed translating of many religious documents.

In the 16th century translations began to be published with their authors indicated, after which their social status had essentially increased.

Peter I gave a strong impetus to the development of the translation art. In 1724 Peter issued a special decree on translations requiring to skillfully transpose the essence and to be competent in the field of a translating material.

All these requirements remain valid today. Firstly, it is important to have a brilliant master of literary language to convey stylistic peculiarities, humor and other features of the origin avoiding line-by-line translation. A translator is more relevantly called “interpreter”. Moreover, not everyone fluent in a foreign language could be able to translate in verse. In fact, only a talented poet can do it, confirming thus the words of V.A. Zhukovsky: “A translator is a slave in prose, and a rival in verse”.

Another variant of translation is the so-called academic writing or style requiring knowledge of professional terminology otherwise a paper or monograph would have never been accepted by the world academic community. Academic writing is important for UrFU researchers seeking for publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The Library have a substantial collection including, for example, the fundamental book by N.G.Popova “Academic writing: IMRAD format of papers” (Н. Г. Попова «Академическое письмо: статьи в формате IMRAD»). You can check the availability of any book in Library Catalogue.

Books considering translation in various languages can be found in Electronic Library Systems.