Lewis and Clark started recruiting interpreters when they were planning their expedition to land west of the Mississippi. Sacagawea and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau joined them in November 1804.
24 – Columbus’s Interpreters: Some Ran Away, Some Stayed, Many Died
We associate Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) with the New World and sometimes forget that he was from the old one. “Christopher Columbus” is the posthumous, anglicised version of the Ligurian “Cristoffa Corombo”, the Italian, “Cristoforo Colombo”, the Portuguese “Cristóvão Colombo” and the Spanish “Cristóbal Colón” by which he was known in his lifetime among Ligurian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish speakers. He …
9 – Thomas Savage, Henry Spelman and Robert Poole
Sir Walter Raleigh’s early attempts at settlement in Virginia informed the approach taken by the next wave of English colonists. Thomas Harriot’s Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia and engravings based on John White’s illustrations were well known, others had written memoirs and Native Americans had travelled to England. Wee our selves have taught them how to be treacherous …
8 – Wanchese and Manteo
In 1584, Elizabeth I granted Walter Raleigh the right to explore and settle any land on the North American continent that was held by non-Christians. Raleigh’s attempts at settlement came to grief but their story reveals something about the role played by interpreters in early English colonialism. We brought home also two of the Savages being lustie men, whose names …
4 – La Malinche
Marina appears in sixteenth-century indigenous records of the conquest of Mexico as a powerful figure. Her status faltered with Mexican independence but today we have a better understanding of her role and significance. The woman who came to be known as La Malinche was given to Hernán Cortés early in his 1519 expedition to Mexico; she was baptised Marina and then …
3 – Melchor, Julián, Pedro, Géronimo and Marina
Accounts of early European expeditions of exploration and conquest usually paid scant attention to the role of interpreters, but there were notable exceptions. A multilingual region The Spanish empire-builders who set out from Cuba to explore lands to the west of the Caribbean took Columbus’s improvisational approach to the need for interpreting. When Francisco Hernández de Córdoba led an expedition …
1- Introductory Post: Christopher Columbus and ‘The Indians’
Christopher Columbus knew he would need interpreters but did not necessarily know what languages would be needed or who would do the work. Conference interpreting has a clear history but less is known about the interpreters who assisted early travellers, diplomats or traders. I have only just started looking into this and am intrigued to note that the literature shows …