Yadayim, Chapter 4, Mishnah 5. The Sages decreed that sacred writings convey tumah to the hands that touch them. Our Mishnah asks a precise question about that decree: which writings, exactly, are included? Does it depend on the language of the text, on the script in which it is written, or on the materials the scribe used?
The opening clause reads: "Targum shebe'Ezra veshebe'Daniyol, metamei es hayadayim." Certain chapters of Sefer Ezra and Sefer Daniyol were set down originally not in Hebrew but in Aramaic, and that is precisely how they stand in Scripture. Since this Aramaic is the authentic wording of the sacred text and not anyone's rendering of it, those portions fall under the decree in full: whoever handles them has hands that become tamei.
The Mishnah now rules out three situations. "Targum shekasvu Ivris": material whose proper language is Aramaic, like those very chapters of Ezra and Daniyol, which a writer instead put down in Hebrew. "Ve'Ivris shekasvu targum": the mirror image, Scripture belonging in Hebrew that was put down as an Aramaic rendering. "Uchsav Ivri": a text copied out in the old Hebrew alphabet. (The letters familiar to us go by the name ksav Ashuris, the Assyrian lettering, which was adopted only at a later stage.) Of all three the Mishnah concludes "eino metamei es hayadayim": they leave the hands free of tumah.
The Mishnah then states the rule in its positive form: "Le'olam eino metamei ad sheyichtvenu Ashuris, al ha'or, uvadyei." Nothing conveys tumah to the hands unless three conditions are met together: it is written in ksav Ashuris, it is written on parchment, and it is written with ink.
In other words, the decree applies only to a genuine scroll, produced the way our Torah scrolls are produced, according to the halachos of sofrus, as a scribe would write it. A printed volume of Tanach does not qualify: it is not parchment, and it is not written with that ink. And a text that appears in translation certainly would not convey tumah to the hands. The status belongs to the sacred writings in their authentic written form alone.