The speaker tries to show some common threads in the history of translation or at least some modern parallels with more ancient examples. As for instance the perils of translating from Sumerian into Hebrew, Sacred Egyptian into Classical Greek, or Aramaic into Arabic. Among other items, Voltaire's translation of Hamlet's soliloquy into rhymed Racinian alexandrine couplets is compared and contrasted with the problems of translating into and out of other "public presentation languages," such as the epigrammatic four-character maxims of Chinese philosophy, poetry, and medicine. The work of a remarkable Iberian who long ago invented the first relational data base and also sought to intervene between Christianity and Islam by translating his own works into Arabic is described, as will the career of Xuanzong, perhaps the best-known translator in the world.