Found in Translation

To Err Is Saintly
One of the most popular saints in art history is St. Jerome, who also happens to
be the patron saint of translators. Jerome’s popularity is not surprising. His life
included many fairy tale–like religious traditions, such as a lion that guarded
him after Jerome removed a thorn from his paw. In his real life as a theologian
and Bible scholar, he managed to make enemies with most everyone he
encountered. Perhaps most important, he was a prolific late fourth- and early
fifth-century translator.
Before beginning his translation of the Old Testament, he studied Hebrew,
the original language of most of the Old Testament books. This sounds
logical, but it was far from normal in Jerome’s era. The young Christian
church had relied on Latin translations from a Greek version of the Old
Testament, the Septuagint, a third-century BCE Jewish translation. Both Jews
and Christians considered the Septuagint inspired, so a new translation of the
original Hebrew source was considered not just unnecessary but unwelcome.
In fact, most of Jerome’s Hebrew instructors gave him lessons in secret,
fearing their synagogues’ disapproval.
But a little public censure never stopped Jerome from pursuing his mission.
His writings reveal his understanding of the importance of translating from the
original source text, regardless of the political climate. He forged ahead,
reveling in the expected criticism, and his translations ended up making up
most of the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Vulgate became the primary Latin Bible
that is still used by much of the Catholic church to the present day. Ironically, it
also served as the source text for most Catholic translations into other
languages into the twentieth century, something that Jerome would have
vehemently opposed.
Jerome managed to make himself equally unpopular with Christians and

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Jews. One passage in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:29) mentions the radiance
of Moses’s head as he descends from Mount Sinai. The Hebrew word for
“radiance” is
or karan. However, Jerome was working with a version of the
Hebrew text without the little diacritical marks that signify the vowels, known
as niqquds. As a result, he mistranslated
(k-r-n) as “horned” (
, keren).
The unfortunate Latin text says: “cumque descenderet Moses de monte Sinai
tenebat duas tabulas testimonii et ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex
consortio sermonis Dei” (underscore added to the word cornuta, which means
horned).
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the newly revised version of the Vulgate corrected this, but sadly it
was not widely embraced by the Catholic church.
In the years that followed, Jerome’s mistake led to many artistic depictions
of Moses with horns, including a famous statue by Michelangelo and a relief in
the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. Even more unfortunately, the
anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews with horns is also most likely due to Jerome’s
mistranslation.
So how does it square up—this cantankerous old academic as the patron
saint of translators? Well, we translators—like everyone else—are far from
perfect. Many of us could even be called cranky (that’s what you get from
working alone most of the time). But like Jerome, most of us do dedicate our
lives to researching and trying to get to the bottom of things, regardless of the
personal cost, including mining the essence of the source text to be
translated.
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