Translation bridges cultures and generations

As World Translation Day is being celebrated on September 30, events surrounding it will inevitably consist of discussions on the challenges faced by translation in the age of Artificial Intelligence and the increased use of digital technologies.
But translation has been around us since the beginning of time, or at least since the first time that different people or communities came together. Over time, scripts and languages have been lost and the windows to the past remained closed. We lacked the ability to understand past civilisations as we had no access to their languages.
From ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mesopotamian cuneiforms and Maya Glyphs from the Mayan civilisation of South America, the 20th century invested much time and effort in deciphering and then translating ancient scripts by meticulously comparing them to later works in adjacent languages. The results were amazing. They opened doors and windows to civilisations which were tantalising but closed to us because of inaccessible language.
Subsequent translations allowed us to encounter myriad worlds of the past, their ideas, beliefs, and experiences which were separated from us by language, geography, and time.
Nor is this the end of the road. There are scripts from the past that remain inaccessible even now. The Indus script from Mohenjo-daro, for example, is yet to be deciphered. Its secrets remain one of the many cultural stories of ancient history which are still to be told.
Today, translation plays a significant role in preserving cultural memory. Without it, many works, and worlds, would have remained undiscovered and invisible. Translation gave these works another life and allowed them to enter new intellectual and cultural contexts.
In this sense, translation is not simply about transferring meaning; it is about creating access to the past while enabling conversations in the present.
Nowhere is this truer than in literary works. Literature translated from languages in any part of the world allows readers to encounter perspectives that may challenge the assumptions of their own cultural environments. A translated novel can make a distant society more intelligible; a poem can communicate an experience of exile or belonging; a historical narrative can reveal how a community understands its own past. Translation thus creates opportunities for dialogue rather than simply providing linguistic equivalence.
Literary language often depends on metaphor, rhythm, irony, cultural memory, and multiple meanings. A translation can therefore become an interpretation of the original text, changing from one translated language to another.
An important component of intercultural understanding, translation is almost inevitable today. As the world has famously shrunk into a global village, there is a tendency to erase all differences. But the resistance to that comes in the form of celebration of uniqueness in traditions, stories, and memories.
This uniqueness is shared through the stories of our ancestors. It is these stories that root us and give a sense of identity. As people are becoming increasingly monolingual, translation will become central to understanding our unique past and the stories that create a community memory.
The instinct to preserve a unique culture comes with a desire to disseminate it as well. Translation is central to this project.
Beyond being merely the transfer of words between languages, translation enables readers to encounter unfamiliar cultural values, histories, and ways of seeing the world.
In doing so, translation becomes a form of intercultural understanding, creating dialogue between cultures while also revealing the differences that shape how meaning is produced and understood.
The continuing significance of translation lies precisely in this capacity to connect worlds that would otherwise remain apart. To that extent, translation remains an exciting journey, unpacking our past in ways that help us to understand our future.