This post looks at the terms used for describe translators and interpreters in French and English since the 17th century as a way of understanding the history of interpreting.
36 – An Accidental Interpreter: Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Archimandrite
With thanks to Dr Evelyne Ender, Senior Lecturer, Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University, for alerting me to this story. Athanasius Paulus must have thought his luck had changed when Jean Jacques Rousseau approached him in a café in Boudry, near Neuchâtel, in April 1731. The exotically attired Eastern Christian Orthodox monk was having trouble making himself …
35 – Krotoa/Eva
I would like to thank Professor Simon Schaffer for letting me know about this early interpreter. [T]he Khoe comprised different nations or communities with a deep history in the region. The Gorachouqua and Goringhaiqua lived and pastured their cattle and sheep on the Cape peninsula itself. The Goringhaikona, a less organized group (sometimes identified as Strandlopers), did not own cattle …
34 – The Interpreters of Oriental Languages for the Georgian Kings of Great Britain
II Abraham Salamé
Salamé was the last Royal Interpreter of Oriental Languages. He is best known for his account of the naval attack on Algiers in August 1816, his first assignment as royal interpreter.
33 – The Interpreters of Oriental Languages for the Georgian Kings of Great Britain
II: Isaac Cardozo Nuñez and Simon Lucas The men on the list of Interpreters of Oriental Languages are not well known, and some of them have left very little trace. We have seen that John Massabecky’s story is unknown; so are those of Messrs Arbona (1763-1767), Logie (1767-1769), Deceramis (1769-1782), Tully (1794-1802), Costa (1802-1809) and Delagarde (1809-1816). They hardly appear …
Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century
32 -The Interpreters of Oriental Languages for the Georgian Kings of Great Britain
Fourteen men acted as Interpreters of Oriental Languages for the King of England from 1723. The first four were Easter Christians from Syria, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
31 – Malamine Camara and Pierre de Brazza
In loving memory of Adrian Adams (1945-2000) When Pierre de Brazza started to explore the coast of Gabon and the Ogooué River in 1874, he relied on soldiers and sailors recruited by the French Navy – laptots – to act as his interpreters. These were the latest iteration of a system that relied on Senegalese intermediaries from the late seventeenth …
Portrait of Mabruki and Bombay in H M Stanley, How I Found Livingstone, Scribner's 1913 edition
30 – Selim, Bombay and Maganga, I Presume?
Bombay and Mabruki. H M Stanley, How I Found Livingstone, Scribner’s 1913. p. 69
29 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part III
Dr Robert Morrison, Sir George Thomas Staunton and the Amherst Embassy of 1816 The failure of the 1816 Amherst embassy to the Chinese court can be seen as a step toward worsening relations between the United Kingdom and China. The tensions between the two nations were clear in the embassy’s dealings with the officials who accompanied them to the emperor’s …
28 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part II
Li Zibiao, George Thomas Staunton and the Macartney Embassy In 1787, The British government decided to send an embassy to the Chinese imperial court to negotiate more favourable trading conditions than those afforded by the Canton system. Their goals included access to ports other than Canton (Guangzhou), an embassy in Beijing, and an island reserved for British traders’ use. While …