Today is International Translation Day, celebrated each year on September 30, which is the feast day of St Jerome, patron saint of translators.

1. St Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in the 4th century. His translation, called The Vulgate, was the official Catholic Bible in the 16th century.

2. According to Unesco’s Index Translationum, the most translated authors of fiction are Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare.

3. The most translated book is The Bible, with Pinocchio in second place.

4. The word ‘translate’ comes from the Latin for ‘to move from one place to another’.

5. Genesis 1:1 has been translated into Klingon as “Daq tagh joH’a’ chenmoHta’ chal je tera”.

6. Tolstoy’s original text for War And Peace in Russian and French contains about 460,000 words. The English translation has about 560,000.

7. The term black hole for a collapsed star was opposed by the French, as its literal translation into French is a rude term.

8. The languages most often translated into others are English, French, German, Russian and Italian.

9. The most common for translation into are German, French, Spanish, English and Japanese.

10. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” Robert Frost (1874-1963).

(Express)