30 September is International Translation Day, held on the feast day of the patron saint of translation St. Jerome. Getting into the spirit of things, this article celebrates International Translation Day by exploring some of the most intriguing translation tidbits.

1. The Patron Saint of Translation Made a Monumental Error

From 382, St. Jerome spent 23 years of his life translating the Bible into Latin. Proficient in Greek and Latin, St. Jerome moved to Jerusalem and developed his grasp of Hebrew to translate the Bible from the original Hebrew source. However, even saints make mistakes, with St. Jerome mistakenly translating the Hebrew for radiance as horns, leading to many images of Moses subsequently showing him with horns.

2. One Translation Error Left a Man Paralyzed and Cost $71 million

In 1980, Cuban-American baseball star Willie Ramirez was rushed to hospital after having severe headaches and slipping in and out of consciousness, with worried family members believing he may have food poisoning. Due to a staff mistranslation, the hospital believed that the Cuban Spanish term intoxicado meant intoxicated and treated Ramirez for a drug overdose, while overlooking a haemmorage that left him paralyzed and the hospital then having to settle a lawsuit for $71 million. You can read more information about this incident here.

3. The Jehovah’s Witness Website Is Available in More Languages than the Bible

While the Bible is indeed the most translated book in the world, available in more than 500 languages, this Jehovah’s Witness website is available in more than 600, including Congolese sign Language and several dialects of Swahili and Thai. Harry Potter, in contrast, is available in just over 70.

4. Google Translate Reads Mystery Novels to Learn

While there have been attempts to develop machine translation since the 1940s, machines are still a way off from being able to replace humans. Google Translate is probably the best-known machine translation tool with often funny and frustrating results. The software learns by reading vast amounts of translated materials and finding patterns. This material includes UN and EU documents and also large amounts of mystery novels.

5. There’s a Good Reason Why Google Is So Fond of Mystery

The most translated author of all time is Agatha Christie, not surprising when you remember that the English writer behind Poirot and Miss Marple is also the best-selling author of all time. Following Christie is the French science-fiction pioneer Jules Verne and then the great bard William Shakespeare.

6. The Leading Target Language on UNESCO’s Database for Book Translations Is German

On UNESCO’s Index Translatorium book translation database, out of 7,000 languages, German is the leading target language, followed by French, Japanese, Spanish, and English. In regard to source translation languages, English is the world leader, followed by French, German, Russian, and Italian.

7. As the World Gets Smaller, the Translation Industry is Growing

Recent estimates show that the translation industry is estimated to be worth $40 billion with around 330,000 translators working around the world. It is predicted to grow to $45 billion in value by 2020.

8. The First President of Tanzania Translated Shakespeare into Swahili

While many writers like Javier Marías, Haruki Murakami and Vladimir Nabokov have translated English works into their own languages, surprisingly, the controversial Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere has also done so, translating Shakespeare’s works into Swahili.

9. Translation Is Thousands of Years Old

The first known translation is of the Sumerian epic The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to around 2100 BCE. As language itself is much older than writing, by about 195,000 years, it is likely that interpreting also long predates translation.

10. A Mistranslation Caused Widespread Panic About Nuclear War

In 1956, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev told Western dignitaries at a conference “We will bury you”. This was taken to mean that the USSR intended to destroy the West, leading to a diplomatic crisis in the height of the Cold War. It’s events like this that show the importance of cultural context in translation. Khrushchev was actually making a Marxist reference to the saying “The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism”, which his interpreter assumed the dignitaries would get. They didn’t.