International Translation Day 2023: Theme, History, Significance

September 30 marks the celebration of International Translation Day 2023. It is a day of annual observance and is celebrated by people and nations all over the world. The day provides an opportunity to honor to the work of language professionals, who plays a crucial role in bringing nations together. By facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation, translators contribute a lot to development and strengthening world peace and security.

September 30 marks the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator, who is considered the patron saint of translators. Therefore, the day was selected for observance of International Translation Day.

International Translation Day 2023 Date

Here you can check the schedule of International Translation day:

International Translation Day 2023 Overview

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Significance of International Translation Day

Languages play a key role in safeguarding cultural diversity and promoting intercultural dialogue. It also helps in strengthening cooperation, building inclusive knowledge societies, mobilizing political will and preserving cultural heritage. Multilingualism is also regarded as a core value of the organization by the United Nations General Assembly.

But at the same time, there is also a need to overcome the linguistic boundaries and thus maintaining good communication and understanding between the peoples of the world and language translators play a very important role in this. To celebrate the translators and their significant work, International Translation Day is observed every year on September 30

History of International Translation Day Observation

A resolution was adopted by the United nations General Assembly on 24 May 2017 that mentions the celebration of International Translation Day every year on September 30. The resolution identified the role of language professionals in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development and was advocated for by several organizations, like Critical Link International, Red T, International Association of Conference Interpreters, World Association of Sign Language Interpreters and others.

The declaration was signed by eleven countries and September 30 was chosen to coincide with the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator. St. Jerome was a priest from North-eastern Italy, who is known as the translator of the Bible into Latin from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

International Translation Day 2023 Celebration

International Translation Day is observed all around the world with various events, seminars and competitions based on language being conducted. All staff members and accredited permanent missions staff of the UN and students from select partner universities are invited to compete in the UN St. Jerome Translation Contest.

The contest will be for all official languages of UN (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Russian, and Spanish) and the German language. Best translations in every language will be rewarded as well. As an individual, you can start learning a new language to celebrate this day.

Process to learn a language quickly

International Translation Day 2023 Theme

The International Federation of Translators (FIT) promotes the celebration of International Translation Day with a unique theme every year. On the decided theme, a poster designing competition is held and all FIT members are encouraged to participate. The theme for International Translation Day 2023 is “Translation unveils the many faces of humanity”.

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