Welcome to my website, which I launched in January 2021. I have a long-standing interest in the history of interpreting: not just modern conference interpreting but the use of intermediaries down the ages. I used to encourage students doing the MA in Conference Interpreting at London’s University of Westminster to consider research into early interpreters, and when the course closed I decided to look into the question myself.
My research has provided me with an opportunity for me to combine my undergraduate training in history with my experience as an interpreter and interpreter trainer. I started out with familiar periods and regions; I investigated who might have interpreted for explorers like Christopher Columbus, the Conquistadors or settlers in the Americas. I soon realised that there were many stories to tell: about local people taken captive and made to learn the language of their invaders; colonists learning local languages; anonymous go-betweens; recognised professionals; successful dynasties and a few famous figures, like La Malinche.
My research was posted on the AIIC website from 2012, and I am grateful to communications officers Luigi Luccarelli and Martin Field for all of their help and encouragement. Several years and some twenty posts later, I decided that the time had come for the pieces to stand alone on a dedicated website: Looking for Interpreter Zero. This has given me the chance to update them and take another look at some of the interpreters who figure in them.
There are still many stories to tell. I enjoy chasing up intermediaries mentioned in the books and articles I read. There are also over-arching issues I hope to investigate, such as the ways in which language, identity, and trust underpin attitudes to outsiders and their interpreters, or the question of how these men and women from different times and places might be connected, and what their experiences can tell us about messengers, their training, their status, and their fate.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Bravo, Christine! I love the presentation, the illustrations, the font, everything about it! Did I mention the texts? 🙂
Well done!
The site is wonderful! And the picture of you makes me even more eager to read (and reread) your learned and engaging posts. Congratulations!
I began to research this subject in the very early 1980s, when I prepared my Doctorate thesis on translation practices in the 18th century. Ruth Morris and I gave a paper on “Interpreting for the Nobs and the Yobs” at the FIT world conference in Brighton in the very early 1990s. Ruth presented a 17th century trial an aristocrat in England in which the assistance of an interpreter was required, and I presented the organisation of interpreters and interpreting services at the Paris Bastille prison in the mid-18th century. At that time, the reception was not even luke warm as it was not about “proper” interpreting.
I am so glad that this somewhat short sighted attitude is beginning to change and has now led to a proper website. There is much we can learn from our predecessors. Thank you!
Meanwhile, if you are in a museum and looking at the official picture of this or that 12th or 17th century embassy or peace conference, look again: spot the interpreter(s)! And sometimes the interpreter will figure in the draft for a picture but disappear from the final version.
Congratulations Christine! Your site is beautiful. The first thing you see the illustrations – so well chosen – increase your curiosity. Then the different chapters, so varied and so interesting that you are disappointed not to find a Chapter 26. I hope yor research continues.
After a professional life as an interpreter I feel enriched by the company of all my previously unknown colleagues and by your unprecedented academic research. Bravissima!
Congratulations, Christine. A very interesting website and I will enjoy being able to read your articles. Looking forward to reading them all.
Christine, this is absolutely fabulous! I love the presentation of the website; the picture slideshow on the Home page already tells a thousand stories and piques your interest, as somebody already said. I like the fact that you have divided the information into periods and regions. I feel as if I have stepped into a library on entering the site. Bravo! Looking forward to reading and discovering more….and more to come. Well done!