Before we had google translate and all of this stuff to do it for us, how did we originally translate one language to another? I mean, before we had “english to french” dictionaries and all of that.
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Consider the [Rosetta Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone) (the original stone not the learning program). The same text is written in Ancient Egyptian using two different scripts, the third is in Ancient Greek. It probably wasn’t easy, but if several people knew those languages and scripts, they would collaborate and find consistent correspondences in the texts. Another way, and probably the most common is that a person or group of persons speaks multiple languages, and will say or write the same thing in those languages. Again, you can build consistent correspondences. The tools were just some form of ink, parchment, paper or whatever. For example, the Rig Veda, the Hindu scripture and oldest religious text was originally transmitted orally in Vedic Sanskrit, but when it was written down (over centuries and various locations), it was often written on banana leaves that were made into something like papyrus.
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