If you are interested in the history of writing, you might like https://www.languageonthemove.com/who-invented-writing/ and https://www.languageonthemove.com/happy-hangul-day/
Good luck following your passion to become a translator and interpreter! 🙂

Thanks, Chocomilk! Sending children away to learn languages is, indeed, not uncommon throughout history. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, some sons of the upper classes were sent to Constantinople so that they would learn Turkish in preparation for diplomatic service. The sons of the lower classes, by contrast, were exchanged among minority families so that they would become multilingual with the expectation of upward social mobility. The former were called “Sprachknaben” (“language boys”), the latter “Tauschkinder” (“exchange children”)

Ingrid: ‘Thanks, Paul! Why does English not do the trick then?’ It does the trick for me as an old white male native speaker with lots of money to spend abroad in airports and hotels but it’s colonial-imperial history and its racist-sexist structure have understandably rendered it unpalatable for lots of people. Expounding would go too much in to the spiritual nature of human beings on a platform primarily linguistic imo. I’ve had a good run thanks to u Ingrid.

Briefly though, at a practical level: For world peace to become real several fundamental principles based on justice and equity need to be in place, for example: a universal education system that is fair to all genders and an auxlang, which usurps no one’s mother tongue, which is easy to learn and to teach and preferably taught at primary school. In the recent past neither French nor Russian were suitable as fair lingua francas because they served only an elite.

Thanks, Paul! Why does English not do the trick then?

“We know very well today that the Assyrians are not Arabs, that the Copts, Syrians, Chaldeans and Egyptians are not Arabs. Each one of these nations belongs to its own sphere of nationality, but, as they all began to study the Arabic language, making it a vehicle of intercommunication, today, they are all considered as one. They are so united that it is impossible to break this indissoluble bond. [so it had been and did remain more or less until Sykes-Picot and the LN, 1919] Today in Syria there are many religious sects, such as Orthodox, Mussulman, the Dorzi, Nestorians and so on. As they all speak Arabic they are considered as one; if you ask any one of them, he will say – I am an Arab, though in reality he is not. Some of them are Greeks, others are Jews etc. In short, there are many different nations and religions in the Orient that are united through the benefit of a common language. In the world of existence an international auxiliary language is the greatest bond to unite the people… Just as in the Orient a common language created common interests between the various nations, likewise, in this age a universal auxiliary language would unite all the people of the world. [Mumma mia] The purpose of my remarks is, that, in the world of humanity, the greatest influence which will work for unity and harmony among the nations is the teaching of a universal language. Every intelligent man [mutatis mutandis: ‘woman’, i.e. ‘all persons’] will bear testimony to this and there is no further need of argument or evidence.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Esperanto banquet, Hotel Moderne, Paris, Feb 1913 (Well known is what ensued 18 months later; many listened, few reacted!

Thanks, Ness! When I was in primary school and we learned the story of Joseph, I asked the teacher why the brothers did not recognize Joseph. It seemed quite incredible to me that brothers would not recognize each other. The teacher responded that the brothers did not recognize Joseph because he spoke through an interpreter (in German “durch einen Dolmetscher”). As it so happened, as a little child, I had no idea what a “Dolmetscher” (“interpreter”) might be but imagined some kind of curtain or screen. So, I imagined Joseph hiding behind a curtain for the longest time, and only at university, when one of our professors mentioned how interpreting appears in the bible, did I realize that I must have had misunderstood something all those years earlier … linguistic and cultural understanding can be tenuous in the best of times. As Milan Kundera says, we proceed in a fog …

Thank you, Jeff, for this important point! I think that our erasure of linguistic and cultural mediation is quite harmful as it makes understanding across languages and cultures seem easy and something that “just happens” without any effort, planning, or care …

Thanks, Frances, for your interesting comment! Maybe all those of us who have regular access to Google Translate and YouTube etc. just live in the same capitalist global consumer culture, which underlies the kind of understanding you suggest?

Nowadays, English is considered the Franca language to facilitate commercial transactions and political or humanitarian agreements in many countries, for example, between the United States and South America or humanitarian help in the middle east. The COVID-19 and the recent events in Afghanistan are examples of how crucial the role of translators and interpreters is in our society. However, in many cases, the profession of a translator or interpreter is not given its value. Which is unfair.

It is interesting to learn how Egyptians’ ethnocentric view led them to consider that learning another language was a “burden” they did not care for (which you have interestingly compared with the current English monolingual mindset) and that they finally had to carry upon their shoulders when their power started to be diminished. Nowadays being bilingual and plurilingual is seen by most people as synonym of skillfulness and even social status (in some cultures).

Thinking about the current role of interpreters in society, my mind immediately goes to thinking about how WWI and WWII generated the need to have quality linguistic services in order successfully participate in war scenarios and then, with the creation of the UN, to reduce the gap among nations, facilitate their interaction and advance towards the solution of global and transcendental political issues.

REFERENCE: http://lalinternadeltraductor.org/n9/historia-interpretacion.html