Throughout the centuries, people believed that the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis has a great relation with translation. It was narrated that the descendants of Noah who survived the great flood, were punished by God. He caused them to speak in different languages before scattering them around the globe. After that incident, the number of languages increased through diversion. As social beings, they began to figure out ways to understand each other, hence the birth of translation.
Along with the rapid growth of translation studies and the increase of research, people began to get away from this story of Babel and started to look for specific dates and figures that marked the translation history. As from the 15th century, many young experts emerged with various theories and methods in doing translation. However with this rapid development a lot of conflicts also arisen, the famous one would be the abuse of Bible translation done by the people with interest who misused it as both dogmatic and political weapon as nation states began to emerge and the centralization of the Church began to weaken evidence in Linguistic terms. Up until the 19th century, the development was still centered on theories and the essence of translation itself, with the high demand of literary works translation as the object.
In early 21st century, studies on translation became an important course in language teaching and learning schools. With the invention of internet began taking its role, the scope of translation also widened. This affects various factors in doing translation, it was demanded that a translator must have a great understanding about the culture of the nation which language will be translated in order that the finished product wouldn’t be lost in translation. Technological developments also marked the vast types of translation objects which not only limited in texts, translator nowadays began to join the cinematography bandwagon to broaden their skills, hence the birth of audiovisual translation. This technique is concerned with the translation of all kinds of TV programs, including films, series and documentaries. This field is based on computer and translation software programs, and is composed in two methods: dubbing and subtitling. Thus, audiovisual translation marks a changing era in translation field.