A short history of translation and translators

The debate about sense-for-sense translation vs. word-for-word translation dates back to antiquity. The coiner of the term “sense for sense” is said to be Jerome (commonly known as St. Jerome) in his “Letter to Pammachius” (396). While translating the Bible into Latin (a translation known as the “Vulgate”), Jerome stated that the translator needed to translate “not word for word but sense for sense” (“non verbum e verbo sed sensum de sensu”).

• The debate about sense-for-sense translation vs. word-for-word translation dates back to antiquity. The coiner of the term “sense for sense” is said to be Jerome (commonly known as St. Jerome) in his “Letter to Pammachius” (396). While translating the Bible into Latin (a translation known as the “Vulgate”), Jerome stated that the translator needed to translate “not word for word but sense for sense” (“non verbum e verbo sed sensum de sensu”).
• Kumārajīva, a Buddhist monk and scholar, was a prolific translator into Chinese of Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit, a monumental work he carried out in the late 4th century. His most famous work is the translation of the “Diamond Sutra”, an influential Mahayana sutra in East Asia, that became an object of devotion and study in Zen Buddhism. A later copy (dated 868) of the Chinese edition of “Diamond Sutra” is “the earliest complete survival of a printed book”, according to the website of the British Library (that owns the piece). Kumārajīva’s clear and straightforward translations focused more on conveying the meaning than on precise literal rendering. They had a deep influence on Chinese Buddhism, and are still more popular than later, more literal translations.