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This Week in Translation History- March 11-17

March 11, 2018

March 13, 1683

John Theophilus Desaguliers was born.
Desaguliers was a French-English philosopher and translator.
He started his studies in Oxfoed in 1705, graduated with a BA in 1709. In 1709 he sstarted lecturing about Newtonian natural philosophy, and helped popularize Newton's idea. In 1712 he earned a master's degree. In 1714 he was elected to the Royal Society as an experimental assistant to Issac Newton. In addition to natural philosophy, he also pursued his engineering interests and designed his own planeterium. He was a clergyman and a freemason. His translation include works on engineering and natural philosophy, including commentarries on Newton's work.

March 13, 1815

James Curtis Hepburn was born.
Hepburn was an American physician, translator, educator, and a Christian missionary. As part of his missionary work in Japan he wrote a Japanese-English and an English-Japanese dictionaries. He developed a system for transliterating Japanese using the Latin alphebet, known as the Hepburn romanization.

March 14, 1898

Arnold Chikobava was born.
Chikobava was a Georgian linguist and philologist. In 1922 he graduated the Tbilisi State University, and later served as a professor of lingsuitics in the same institution. He specialized in Ibero-Cacucasian languages, and was a harsh critic of Nicholas Marr's "Japhetic" theory of language.

March 15, 1852

Augusta, Lady Gregory was born
Lady Gregory was an Anglo-Iris landowner, playwright, and translator. She is best known for her part in the Irish Literary Revival. Leading figures of the revival used to meet regularly at her home in County Galway. She published several books retelling stories from Irish mythology. She spents a lot of time translating in the National Library of Ireland.

March 16, 1840

Georg von der Gabelentz was born.
Gablenets was a German linguist and sinologist. His Chinese Grammar, published in 1881, is still considered to be one of the best grammatical surverys of Classical Chinese.

March 16, 1906

Francisco Ayala was born.
Ayala was a Spanish sociologist, novelist, and translator.