Beyond the words. Some considerations about the word “to translate” in Sumerian

Abstract

At least from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC onwards, the translation from Sumerian into
Akkadian represented an important part of the scribal activity in ancient Mesopotamia. Nevertheless
a verb describing the specific activity of the literary translation is not known either in Sumerian or in
Akkadian: inim-bal means “to speak (in order to resolve a misunderstanding)”, “to interpret” and
only rarely “to translate” (while the word eme-bal, which is known from the 3rd millennium onwards,
designates the simultaneous translator). This is not surprising: on the one hand, there was no real
need for translations (the scribes knew both languages and the rest of the population was illiterate);
on the other hand, Sumerian and Akkadian were not considered two different languages, but the two
perfectly symmetrical sides of one single original idiom (eme-ha-mun / lišān mithurti). Sumerian was
the “dark” side of this language: therefore the so-called translations are rather interpretations of the
original Sumerian texts, made in order to disclose their deeply hidden meaning. The verb inim-bal,
literally meaning “to go beyond the word”, suits well this kind of intellectual activity.