1st Edition

Framing the Interpreter Towards a visual perspective

Edited By Anxo Fernandez-Ocampo, Michaela Wolf Copyright 2014
    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    Situations of conflict offer special insights into the history of the interpreter figure, and specifically the part played in that history by photographic representations of interpreters.

    This book analyses photo postcards, snapshots and press photos from several historical periods of conflict, associated with different photographic technologies and habits of image consumption: the colonial period, the First and Second World War, and the Cold War. The book’s methodological approach to the "framing" of the interpreter uses tools taken primarily from visual anthropology, sociology and visual syntax to analyse the imagery of the modern era of interpreting. By means of these interpretative frames, the contributions suggest that each culture, subculture or social group constructed its own representation of the interpreter figure through photography.

    The volume breaks new ground for image-based research in translation studies by examining photographic representations that reveal the interpreter as a socially constructed category. It locates the interpreter’s mediating efforts at the core of the human sciences.

    This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in translation and interpreting studies, as well as to those working in visual studies, photography, anthropology and military/conflict studies.

    Part I: Methodological Approaches  1. Interpreting Photographs: Some thoughts on method (Elizabeth Edwards)  2. Engravings of Interpreters in the Photographic Era (Anxo Fernández-Ocampo)  Part II: Colonial exposures  3. Framing and Masking: Photographing the interpreter in/of colonial conflict (Rachael Langford) 4. Anthropology’s Intermediary Spaces (Elizabeth Edwards)  5. The Minoritization of Interpreting: Cultural brokerage between incapacitation and self-empowerment (Birgit Mersmann)  6. Framing the Interpreter’s Wife (Anxo Fernández-Ocampo and Michaela Wolf)  Part III: First World War: Messengers of victory  7. Staging the Entente in the First World War (Michael Kelly)  8. Power Relations in Postcards of French First World War Military Interpreters (Franziska Heimburger)  9. Staging Prisoners of War: The interpreter figure in First World War postcards (Michaela Wolf)  Part IV: Second World War: Power in many guises  10. Frames and the Interpreter in the Imperial War Museum Photographic Archive (Hilary Footitt)  11. Interpreting for Generals: Military interpreters in Finnish propaganda photography (Pekka Kujamäki)  12. Ordinary Snapshots of Interpreters at War: A narrative of disaster (Xoán Manuel Garrido-Vilariño)  13. The Visibility of Collaborators: Snapshots of wartime and post-war interpreters (Kayoko Takeda)  Part V: Cold War: The field, the table and the booth  14. Interpreters at the Edges of the Cold War (Jesús Baigorri-Jalón)  15. Interpreters in the Field: Friends or foes? (María Manuela Fernández-Sánchez)  16. "The Biggest Round Table": The interpreters’ visibility at the Potsdam Conference (Icíar Alonso-Araguás)  17. Through the Cold War Lens: Russian and US interpreters as cultural and political mediators (Brian James Baer)

    Biography

    Anxo Fernández-Ocampo is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Philology and Translation, University of Vigo, Spain.

    Michaela Wolf is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation Studies, University of Graz, Austria. She is the author of Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens. Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (2012).

    'Framing the Interpreter is a ground-breaking volume that illuminates the power of visual media to shape our understanding of interpreters and interpreter mediation in situations of conflict and beyond. A rich source of conceptual tools and methodological guidance, this work will appeal to scholars working at the interface of disciplines.' Rebecca Tipton, University of Manchester, UK