Translation meant transferring something from one state into another. For example, the bones of a saint are removed from one church and put in another (“translation”), a holiday is switched from one day to another (“translation”) or a person is taken up directly to heaven from earth without dying (“translation”).
Its meaning of transferring words and thoughts from one language to another related originally to the Bible. The first person to use it was an Englishman, Richard Rolle, a writer about religion and also a translator of the Bible. Now largely unknown, he was probably the No. 1 bestseller in England throughout the 1300s and 1400s. As a result, he is one of the authors who contributed some of the most new words to the English language.