Chapter 3

The Hidden Politics of Translation

On Interpreters’ and Translators’ Agency in

International Relations

Anatoly Reshetnikov

On April 12, 2017, after Russia yet again vetoed a UN Security Council

resolution condemning the war crimes of Bashar al- Assad’s regime in Syria,

the representatives of Russia and the UK clashed in a heated rhetorical

exchange.1 After the British representative, Matthew Rycroft, accused Russia

of undermining its own credibility by protecting the Assad regime, Russia’s

Vladimir Safronkov delivered a speech full of blunt accusations, wagged his

finger at Rycroft, and raised the tone of his voice to a manifestly undiplomatic level. Safronkov’s
“Don’t you dare insult Russia again!” sounded like a

direct threat, while his invective “Look at me! Why are you looking away?!”

instantly became a meme and a scandal in both international and Russian

domestic contexts (Roth 2017). Certainly, Safronkov’s harangue required

interpretation to make sense to others. It also required transcription and

translation to stay on the record. While simultaneous interpretation into

English (Rycroft’s main language) was extremely accurate, it naturally failed

to convey the crux of the insult: the informal address (ты) chosen over the

formal one (вы), which happens to be an irrelevant distinction in English

grammar. Yet it is the transcript of the speech and its translations where the

most interesting transformations took place. Apparently, many stylistic and

semantic elements of Safronkov’s rhetorical attack were either completely

lost or significantly altered in transcription and translations.2 Thus, the most transgressive
elements of his presumably deliberate provocation were subtly

erased from history.

As the case above demonstrates, few other actors directly involved in

political communication are as fundamentally important and virtually invis

ible at the same time as political interpreters and translators. On the one

hand, these professionals, be they staff employees of governments and inter

national organizations (IOs) or freelancers, (re)create exceptionally impor

tant political discourse across their working languages, relying on their inter

lingual and intercultural competence (which their clients normally lack),

and engrave that discourse both in history and in the moment in “as trans

lated” form (Kazakov 2021, 15:50).3 On the other hand, political interpreters

and translators extremely rarely make it into the public eye and, as is the

case with simultaneous and remote interpreters, often remain not only virtu

ally but also physically invisible to political actors and their audiences. This

paradoxical combination of vital importance and invisibility takes a toll on

these people’s status, rendering it “ambivalent and insecure” (Sela- Sheffy and

Shlesinger 2008, 80).

Despite requiring a master’s degree and often an official authorization,

the profession of interpreters and translators in both national and inter

national political institutions is still attributed a relatively low social sta

tus, not comparable to some other professions requiring equal or lower

amounts of training and skill (Dam and Zethsen 2008, 2012). Freelance

interpreters/translators working in politics suffer from even harsher

underappreciation (Muylle 2021). Even in comparison to literary transla

tors, political interpreters/translators enjoy considerably less visibility and

prestige (outside of their professional community). Meanwhile, they labor

at the absolute interface between states and often mitigate potential and

unfolding conflicts. Yet the mainstream perception of the profession—

both emic and etic— is still that this work should ideally remain almost

invisible, which echoes the widespread image of translation as “a pane

of glass” and of interpreters as mere “go- betweens” (Muylle 2021; Alek

seeva 2021).4 The normalization of invisibility affects various layers of the

professional experience of political interpreters/translators, effacing their

authorship, mainstreaming scapegoating practices, and frequently erasing

the sole fact of their physical presence.5 Interpretation/translation is thus

still considered “a pink- collar profession,” and its full- fledged recognition

“has not yet been achieved” (Sela- Sheffy and Shlesinger 2008, 80). Who

creates and sustains this limbo for interpreters/translators as essential yet

invisible workers of politics? Which historical processes and institutions contributed to the
displacement of political interpreters/translators from

politics and the public eye, and how exactly did it happen? How is the

agency of these professionals perceived today by all the actors involved,

and how does translation and positional interlinguality help us rethink

agency in international relations?

In this chapter, I perform a critical analysis of the history and the present of

political interpretation/translation. My main argument is that over the years

(and centuries) political interpreters/translators have been actively marginal

ized and controlled by statesmen through direct and indirect means. In the

same spirit, they were effectively incorporated into the international bureau

cracy in the twentieth century, and now combine the features of bureaucrats

and generic service workers.6 Thus most interlingual encounters— the key

sites of “mediating estrangement” (Der Derian 1987)— remain policed by

the bureaucratic apparatuses of the state and the international organizations.

Remaining virtually invisible in the process, political interpreters/translators

thus often help preserve the existing power hierarchies, greasing the bearings
of the hegemonic order.

While I leave a more detailed study of practices and routines of modern

interpretation and translation services in IOs to ethnographers, here I try

to accomplish two things: (1) to reconstruct the history of control and dis

placement of political interpreters/translators, and (2) to provide empirical

examples of how they exercise their agency today, while being embedded in

the international bureaucracy. When describing the history of displacement,

I trace how openly discriminatory mechanisms of exclusion were gradually

replaced by a sequence of less direct technological and knowledge regimes

that exacerbated interpreters’ invisibility. To show how political interpret

ers/translators exercise their agency in the current organizational setup, I

provide three empirical illustrations that showcase the roles political inter

preters/translators often perform in modern international settings: (1) the

gatekeepers of institutional and national legacies, (2) intercultural censors

and conduits, and (3) subtle political editors.

In the empirical part of my analysis, I draw on interviews with practic

ing interpreters/translators, as well as their educators and managers, to shed

light on how all of them exercise, wittingly or not, their political agency

within the constraints imposed by the technological and knowledge regimes

they are embedded in. I begin by reviewing the literature on interpreters’

and translators’ political agency, and problematize the relatively more rec

ognized agency and importance of interpreters/translators working outside

formal politics.

Reclaiming Agency: Scholarly Takes on the Role of Interpreters

and Translators

T
he problem of invisibility is relevant for virtually all kinds of interpret

ers/translators, not only those who work in politics. From translators of

plays in theaters (Jänis 1996) to literary translators (Venuti 2008, 1– 13) to

technical translators (Yakimenko 2021) to business interpreters (Kazakov

2021, 28:00)— most practitioners of the craft feel and sometimes suffer

from their invisibility: legal, social, and in situ.7 Rakefet Sela- Sheffy and

Miriam Shlesinger find this especially puzzling, given “the enormous poten

tial power encapsulated in their work as culture mediators par excellence,

namely as those who have held the key to all cultural contacts and linguistic

exchange” (2008, 80). Indeed, without interpreters/translators the dissemi

nation of knowledge, religions, cultural values, and certainly power would

have been impossible (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012). Furthermore, inter

preters/translators are the ones who often have their hands and lips on the

important decisions on what exactly should be translated and how, often

serving as gatekeepers of their cultures (Tahir- Gurcağlar 2009, 178– 81) and

institutions (Davidson 2000).

herefore, it’s no wonder that, following the linguistic turn in social sci

ences and humanities, many scholars tried to reclaim and restore the agency

of interpreters/translators. “This was a response to widespread narratives

[which portrayed the translator] as ‘neutral,’ with no stake in the interaction

other than upholding professional standards, [and the realization that] trans

lators . . . may come to affiliate— professionally, emotionally, ideologically—

with different agendas, accounts of some aspect of the world, cultural or

political communities” (Baker 2009, 223). Among the early influential works

on the topic was Lawrence Venuti’s cultural critique of the translator’s invis
ibility (1991, [1992] 2020, [1995] 2008). Venuti’s main goal was “to make the

translator more visible so as to resist and change the conditions under which

translation is theorized, studied, and practiced today, especially in English-

speaking countries” (2008, 13). Gaining momentum in the 1990s, this cause

attracted many ardent followers.8

he axiomatic foundation beneath the agential revolution consisted of

two main pillars. First, there was a premise that agency is practically inescap

able, which is familiar to all disciplines affected by the interpretivist turn.9

hus, perspective was recognized as an inalienable quality of any human

action. Second, there were specifically linguistic and translation- related

assumptions that came to the fore, including anisomorphisms of languages,

asymmetries of culture, and the impossibility of translating fully and accurately all intertextual
references without changing the text’s form and genre

entirely (Tymoczko 2014, 211).10 Combined, these two pillars made it exceed

ingly clear for any thoughtful observer that interpreters/translators have to

make choices, as well as edit and postedit the results of their intellectual

work all the time.

What is more, the positionality of the translator/interpreter is often wed

ded to contexts of domination.11 Thus, it is indeed unfortunate that the

choices those actors make, as well as their positions in the hierarchies of

power, remain hidden from view in the disciplines that study power as their

main subject. As Einar Wigen and Mauro Caraccioli demonstrated in the

introduction to this volume, International Relations has long been a hostage

to the discipline’s Anglophonic bias and mostly turned a blind eye on inter

preters/translators. Political science does not fare any better. Postcolonial

scholarship (and literary studies as the discipline’s port of departure) has

devoted more attention to the political agency of interpreters/translators.

Attending to the biographies and work of outstanding interpreters/transla

tors, literary and postcolonial scholars demonstrated the profound impact

that interpreters/translators often exerted on their cultural and political

milieus, sometimes consciously and with a clear political purpose (Milton

and Euzebiq 2004; Bastin 2009; Semenenko 2016), and sometimes rather

unwittingly, by spontaneous semantic restructuring that naturalized a cer

tain type of power hierarchy (AbdelRahim 2014; Spivak 1993, 179– 81).12

Curiously, when it comes to those whose profession is to interpret and

translate for politicians and diplomats, their political agency was not rein

stated in the same fashion as the agencies of literary translators and vari

ous translation agents acting in colonial and postcolonial contexts. If the

latter two categories could be said to enact politics from within the act of

translation/interpretation itself (i.e., while performing their primary role),

then political interpreters/translators are deemed to be able to reclaim their

political agency only by changing their role (i.e., by becoming politicians

or diplomats). This, however, happens quite seldom,13 which is strange. For

interpreters/translators, going into international politics would, in fact, be a

very natural move. First, given their advanced intercultural and interlingual

competence, political erudition, ability to listen, familiarity with negotia

tion techniques, as well as acquired networks, political interpreters/transla

tors are a perfect fit for the job (Muylle 2021). Second, if one agrees with

Hannah Arendt’s assertion that plurality is the fundamental condition of all

political life and humans “are all the same . . . in such a way that nobody is

ever the same” (1998, 7– 8), interpreters/translators seem to be acutely aware

of this ontology. Reflecting this, Vladimir Putin’s interpreter Kirill Kazakov, for instance, placed
“latitude of thought” (широта взглядов) among the

top three essential skills for any political interpreter, meaning precisely the

unavoidable plurality of discourses and logics at the negotiating table and

the interpreter’s ability to get deeply acquainted with and switch between

those different positions (2021, 39:00). Alekseeva, who educated many gen

erations of conference interpreters, also believes that “an interpreter is truly

well- equipped to become a modern politician, who is able to account for

most diverse interests” (2021, emphasis is prosodic). In addition, the impor

tance of plurality of situational and historical contexts is one of the main

principles that aspiring interpreters are requested to digest during their

studies— often to their great displeasure (Yakimenko 2021).14

In the meantime, most homages to the profession have lauded political

interpreters/translators as essential participants of political communication,

and yet still present them as intermediaries and service providers, whose

professional Everest was accuracy and invisibility (e.g., Roland 1999). The

stories about outstanding political interpreters/translators even had a circen

sian vibe. They were portrayed as superhumans with unbelievable memory,

encyclopedic erudition, and iron- like stamina, who, nevertheless, always

remained politically invisible and could not act (in the Arendtian sense).

Among such outstanding professionals was, for instance, Olivia Rosetti

Agresti (1875– 1960) “who could take in a whole speech in English, French

or Italian and repeat it in the other two languages without ever taking a

note” (Salvador de Madariaga, cited in Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 251).

Another example is Paul Mantoux, who could allegedly render unexpected

quotations from British poetry in French verse and attracted audiences to

the sessions of the League of Nations that would come specifically to watch
him work (Roland 1999, 157– 58).

Interestingly, since nowadays most conference interpretation happens

simultaneously or remotely, or both, such stories about virtuoso interpret

ers are almost unimaginable today (outside of narrow professional circles).

As Noël Muylle15 put this in an interview, “those times are over” (2021). No

doubt, political interpreters still do participate personally in public high-

level meetings and negotiations. Yet these meetings constitute a relatively

small share of interpreters’ working hours (Kazakov 2021, 24:30), and often

the real function of an interpreter during such meetings is not what it seems

from the outside. First, most diplomats understand English these days and

can communicate (at least on the basic level) without an interpreter (H.

2021; Yakimenko 2021). Second, every public high- level meeting is only the

“tip of the iceberg” that is supported by a colossal amount of work at the

lower levels (Kazakov 2021, 24:30; H. 2021). Therefore, most of what is being discussed, for
instance, between two heads of states at a summit has usually

been already decided. At such meetings, consecutive interpreters usually play

a “ceremonial role” (especially if English is one of the meeting’s languages),

or “a role of the buffer,” that is, they merely reserve extra time for politicians

and diplomats to think about their next statement (Yakimenko 2021; H.

2021). Occasionally, when something goes wrong, interpreters often serve as

“convenient scapegoats,” as it is all too “easy [for a politician] to hide behind

interpreting” (Muylle 2021). In general, however, the profession is becom

ing more and more invisible, especially after the adoption of simultaneous

(and later— remote) interpretation in IOs and high- level political confer

ences. This massive displacement of political interpreters was justified by a

“rational” cause of practical necessity and anticipated savings.16 One tends

to forget, however, that throughout history a bureaucratized translation

and interpretation service capable of providing simultaneous interpretation

and further translation between several languages was never a cost- effective

option for managing linguistic plurality.17 Still, how did this displacement

proceed, and is it a recent phenomenon? Who promoted it and who opposed

it? What is the situation like today? In the next section, I briefly reconstruct

the history of control and displacement— two typical strategies that political

actors frequently adopted in their relations with interpreters.

Control and Displacement: A Critical History of

Political Interpretation

Control over an Interpreter’s Political Loyalty

Political interpretation has always been a tricky business. The issue of the

interpreters’ loyalty has gnawed at political actors since the beginning of

times. Often, premodern interpreters were recruited from tightly controlled

marginalized groups, such as slaves, ethnic hybrids, religious minorities, and

women. Not infrequently they were prisoners of war, political outcasts, or

victims of kidnapping (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 248). Despite their

tremendous importance, their names were almost never recorded in the

chronicles, and they hardly ever received due credit for their work. A prime

example of this is the predominant anonymity of most interpreter figures

mentioned in the Bible (Roland 1999, 9– 10). Historically, politicians also

created various elaborate systems of selective inclusion to guard the profes

sion from those whom they, for whatever reason, did not trust. Toward the

end of the Reconquista in medieval Spain, interpreters’ loyalty was ensured through making this
post hereditary, which allegedly ensured that interpret

ers “would have been educated in accordance with a pro- monarchy value

system” (Cáceres Würsig 2017, 7). In the times of the conquest of the Ameri

cas, the colonizers both trained their loyal subjects to speak a foreign lan
guage and captured and enslaved locals to train them to speak the empire’s

tongue.18 When brought to the Iberian Peninsula, those individuals and

their children entered the same hereditary system, in which they were, how

ever, still incapacitated, marred with their irredeemable ethnic origin. This

marginalization existed despite the fact that those who served as interpreters

were supposed to convert to the Catholic faith to “annul” their foreignness

(Cáceres Würsig 2017, 4– 8).

As a rule, premodern and early modern recruitment of political inter

preters usually started off as a heteronomous system (i.e., implying the

recruitment/enslavement of the colonized), and then gradually developed

into an autonomous system (i.e., when previously captured and other local

individuals whose allegiance was deemed unquestioned were trained to

become interpreters for the crown). The latter system, although it was time-

consuming to build, was always preferred by politicians as more trustworthy

(Cáceres Würsig 2017, 9; Cronin 2002). Thus, akin to diplomats who were

turned from permanent expatriates into paid nomads and swallowed by state

bureaucracies (Neumann 2011), interpreters were also always “domesticated”

by the state. The habit of mistrusting political interpreters did not vanish

with colonial empires. As recently as 1953, when Australia caught a group

of Russian spies, the Australian government sought “a person of indubi

table loyalty but expert knowledge of Russian to examine both the relevant

documents and the more than 200 witnesses” (Roland 1999, 160, emphasis

added). They found the person by hiring a Briton, Arthur Hubert Birse, who

had interpreted for Winston Churchill during his meetings with Joseph Sta

lin. In the twenty- first century, during the war in Iraq (2003– 11), the Ameri

can army distinguished between three categories of interpreters (based on

their perceived loyalty). The least trusted ones, who received no protection

and were not considered as military personnel, were local interpreters. The

second category included American citizens with native competency in the

target language. The third category consisted of American citizens who were

allowed to participate in high- security operations, and for whom a native

competency in the target language was not required (Inghilleri 2010, 177).

Even though modern- day political interpreters do not need to pass a

purity of blood test to prove their loyalty, like their Spanish colleagues a

few hundred years ago (Cáceres Würsig 2017, 10– 11), a lot of effort is still

invested in ensuring their ideological reliability, even though in a less direct way. In our
conversations, both Alekseeva and H. admitted that during the

Cold War, the education of political interpreters was heavily infused with

multiple ideological subjects aiming at molding professionals who would

also be loyal citizens.19 In that context, political dissent meant the end of an

interpreter’s career. Nowadays, the situation has changed in the sense that

interpreters are trained to assume more individual responsibility for their

work and have broader autonomy from their clients.

Yet, when it comes to their political allegiance, things get more com

plicated. Alekseeva, who educates conference interpreters and translators,

believes that they “must be patriots” of their home country, since one of their

functions is to represent their state on the international arena.20 The posi

tion of H., another prominent educator of conference interpreters, is more

nuanced: In the US, where political interpreters spend their entire careers

working for the State Department and do not rotate together with admin

istrations, they are, first and foremost, considered to be “public servants” in

the pay of the American nation, which leaves ample room for patriotism.

In some other countries, where governments use freelancers, interpreters are

believed to be “service providers” who certainly are supposed to act in the best

interest of their clients, yet their selection is technically merit- based. How

ever, H. also noted that in her country every administration tends to have a

pool of their trusted interpreters, who, accordingly, lose access to government

jobs once a new administration comes to power. Yakimenko, a practicing

interpreter, educator, and translator, admits that the political allegiance of an

interpreter is, indeed, important, but explains that the system functions in

such a way that “if the general political line deeply contradicts [an interpret

er’s] inner values, she would either need to constantly be in a schizophrenic

mindset, which would only add to the general schizophrenia characteristic of

her profession,” or she would choose to stop doing this (2021). Apparently,

such value conflict was one of the main reasons why Yakimenko no longer

accepts offers to work in high politics. Evidently, the issue of tight control

over interpreters’ political allegiance remains pressingly relevant.

With the advance of globalization and the emergence of large IOs, the

latter started to compete with states for the “domestication” of interpreters.

Muylle (2021) provides a very illustrative example from his work for the

European Commission in the 1970s. When China came into close contact

with the European international system and was welcomed at the negotia

tion table, it insisted on bringing in its own interpreters trained in China,

despite the fact that by then the EU had already trained interpreters to and

from Chinese (using their own methodologies) for the EU- China annual

committees. No doubt, this situation should not be perceived in terms of “proper” ideological
indoctrination on one side (China) and the lack thereof

on the other (the EU). While contemporary international organizations

allegedly do not discriminate based on political views, or on nationality,

religion, or ethnicity, scholars demonstrate that in those institutions inter

preters/translators are still “indoctrinated in codes of practice and protocols,

which limit their scope of action and provide authorities with certain con

trol over the tasks that have to be developed” (Cáceres Würsig 2017, 18; also

see Beaton- Thome 2020 and the discussion of interpreters as gatekeepers

of institutional legacies below). Thus, IOs imbue their interpretation and

translation services with a specific kind of bureaucratic rationality to build

an ideal type of conference interpreter/translator who would be ready to

meticulously reproduce the organizational standards and follow strict pro

tocols. The entry into this “golden cage” (Yakimenko 2021) is protected by

a series of excruciating exams.21 Thus, in the seven- plus decades since the

founding of the United Nations, a great number of interpreters/translators

have been “domesticated” by the international bureaucracy.

Displacement of Interpreters from Public Politics

In January 2019, several high- profile interpreters and educators were asked

to comment on the scandal that involved former US President Donald

Trump’s interpreter Marina Gross, whom the Congress wanted to testify

about Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin (France24 2019). All commen

tators insisted that Gross must not be subpoenaed for both ethical and prac

tical reasons. Media framed the situation as “an unwelcome spotlight on

interpreters . . . who [usually] stay scrupulously in the shadows” (France24

2019). Many interpreters agreed with such framing. Uros Peterc, the presi

dent of the International Association of Conference Interpreters, said “it’s

actually unprecedented that we are in the spotlight as much as we are now”

(France24 2019). Echoing Peterc’s statement, Laura Burian from the Middle

bury Institute of International Studies noted that “since World War II when

the use of interpreters became more codified, you’ve just assumed that the
interpreter will never be asked to speak” (France24 2019).

he spotlight that Peterc is referring to was not always unwelcomed by

political interpreters. The turn of the twentieth century and several decades

that followed saw a plethora of extraordinary political interpreters, some of

which have been mentioned previously. They enjoyed publicity and atten

tion. Often, their political position also seemed quite obvious and was indi

rectly reflected in their interpretation style. For instance, Paul Mantoux was known for
“smoothening out . . . the impassionate appeals of nationalis

tic speakers” (Stephen Bonsal, cited in Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 251),

thereby revealing his somewhat conservative and institutionalist stance.

Woodrow Wilson’s interpreter Stephen Bonsal was once asked to demand

the same from Lawrence of Arabia who interpreted Emir Faisal’s poignant

speeches. Allegedly, Lawrence refused, responding that the emir was “speak

ing for the horsemen who carried the Arab flag across the great dessert,” and

since the emir was bearing their last words, he could not change them, just

like Lawrence could not soften them (Bonsal, cited in Delisle and Wood

sworth 2012, 252).22 Thus, in the early twentieth century, political interpre

tation could be compared to a performance, and the consecutive technique

used at most political conferences provided the stage for interpreters to

showcase their outstanding cognitive abilities and individual styles, but it

also made the unavoidable semantic variation that comes in with every act

of interpretation obvious to many observers. The traces of this mode could

sometimes be found in the post– World War II context as well. Muylle recalls

a professional anecdote from the postwar diplomatic negotiations between

Germany and France facilitated through consecutive interpretation. After

one issue on the agenda was settled, one of the ministers approached the
interpreter, saying, “But that is not what I have said,” to which the inter

preter replied, “No, sir, but it is what you should have said” (Muylle 2021).

While it was not uncommon at the dawn of the EU to have people

speaking and understanding four different languages in the negotiation

room (Muylle 2021), the proliferation of multilingual international organi

zations triggered the professionalization and bureaucratization of interpreta

tion/translation. If earlier these activities were perceived as either an auxil

iary job fitting for students of linguistics and bilinguals (Yakimenko 2021) or

a true vocation for select virtuosos, in the middle of the twentieth century

there emerged a demand for uniformity and measurable expertise. On the

one hand, this created a window for bottom- up organization and profes

sional solidarity that could help achieve a proper recognition of the profes

sion. On the other hand, this brought uniformity and a tectonic shift in

the practice of political interpretation that turned interpreters into generic

service providers within a bureaucratized structure and drastically reduced

their visibility: consecutive interpretation was almost completely replaced

with simultaneous interpretation that physically removed interpreters from

the political spectacle.

he common explanation of the utility of simultaneous interpretation at

political conferences is that it saves time, adequate technologies permitting.

Yet the preference for simultaneous interpretation was far from being unanimous. Some scholars
argued that it was, in fact, the other way around: con

secutive interpretation saves time, as it allows more focus on the discussion

and reserves more time for developing appropriate answers and rebuttals

(Seleskovitch 1978, 124– 25). With simultaneous interpretation, the previ

ously mentioned interpreting buffer is gone, and politicians have to negoti

ate through direct speech, which is not the preferred way of negotiating for

some of them.23 When more than three languages are involved, however,

consecutive interpretation may indeed seem too cumbersome. Thus, when

IBM originally created a system that could technically facilitate simultane

ous interpretation in the 1920s, it was greeted with enthusiasm and soon

enough put into use: first, in the International Labour Office in Geneva

(1927), then at the Fifteenth International Congress of Physiology in Lenin

grad (1935) (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 253). Sergei Chernov, the head of

the Simultaneous Interpretation Department at the International Monetary

Fund, also points out (2017) that the first Soviet simultaneous interpretation

technology developed by V. Epshtein was used during the Sixth World Con

gress of the Comintern in 1928. Yet it was not until after World War II, when

the new method became the new norm. Admittedly, the point of no return

was the Nuremberg trials (1945– 46), after which simultaneous interpreta

tion became world famous. Following the trials, simultaneous interpretation

was quickly adopted by the UN General Assembly (1947) and the Security

Council (1950) (Roland 1999, 131).

Every time the simultaneous method was adopted, many professional

interpreters voiced their discontent. Back in Nuremberg, they questioned

the quality and efficiency of the method (especially in the context of highly

sensitive juridical matters exerting irrevocable impact on people’s lives).

Additionally, they “feared that the anonymity of the booth would not only

downgrade their status but destroy their ‘style’” (Roland 1999, 130). In the

UN, highly qualified interpreters also protested the new system, arguing

that the accuracy of interpretation would be lost, which could bring a crisis

of the profession (Roland 1999, 131; Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 254).
Nevertheless, simultaneous interpretation was being adopted by an increas

ing number of international organizations and political summits. Interpret

ers, in their turn, were left to adjust to the demands of the age. Locked in

the booth, they were removed from public attention. Thus, having partially

liberated themselves from the rigid hierarchies and barriers of the old days

and having turned their craft into a proper profession, they also discovered

that a large share of their new professional life would have to remain virtu

ally invisible.24

H. (2021) identifies remote interpreting as another important milestone that further displaced
political interpreters from the communica

tion context. The technology required to organize remote interpreting

was already available in the 1970s, and, as both H. and Yakimenko attest

(2021), it was used sporadically by the UN (and later— by governments

and corporations), and started to be perceived as normal in the 1990s.

Here again, “interpreters resisted, because they feared that they would

become even more effaced, [would be put] even further away from the

events” (H. 2021). Muylle, who personally participated in the first remote

interpretation experiment organized by the UN during a Law of the Sea

conference in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, also mentions that interpreters

tried to organize a demarche against the new method. They voiced con

cerns about the lack of direct visual contact with the delegates, as well as

about fatigue and sore eyes caused by imperfect technology. Their ideal

vision of how interpretation should be handled harked back to the League

of Nations. Muylle himself, however, thought that their concerns were

exaggerated and was eager to keep up with the times, especially since the

experiment showed no qualitative difference between onsite and remote

simultaneous interpretation (Muylle 2021).

It took the professional community twenty years to give up and finally

accept the new method. But it was not until the COVID- 19 pandemic that

remote interpreting would get its first test run for becoming a new global

norm, since the overwhelming majority of political interpreters started to

work remotely. H. follows the ongoing transformation with curiosity, but

also some apprehension. She and many others in the interpreters’ commu

nity find it symptomatic that the currently booming professional remote

interpreting platforms, such as Kudo, Interprefy, and Voiceboxer, do not

even anticipate a separate video box for the interpreter, creating a strong

impression that “you are completely not there!” (H. 2021). Naturally, the

interpreter is always there, both contextually and historically. What is more,

even in politics and diplomacy, the interpreter is exercising their political

agency in a number of very important ways. However, the current hege

monic knowledge regime that defines the standards of excellence and the

main functions of political interpreters/translators tilts the balance of their

agential capacity toward maintaining the political status quo and cushion

ing the emerging transgressions (i.e., it turns interpreters/translators into a

collective Paul Mantoux, rather than a Lawrence of Arabia). In the follow

ing section, I present a collection of empirical illustrations of when politi

cal interpreters/translators enacted politics, becoming either gatekeepers of

institutional and national legacies, or intercultural censors and conduits, or

subtle political editors.

The Hidden Politics of Interpretation/Translation

Political Translators as Gatekeepers of Institutional

and National Legacies

Coming back to the Safronkov incident with which this chapter began, I
return to the tension between formal and informal pronouns. In the official

Russian version of the UN Security Council meeting records, the informal

pronoun ты was replaced by the formal вы, and the surrounding syntax was

transformed to match the formal standard. Some of the most unceremoni

ous bits such as “Why are you turning your eyes away?” and “What do you

think you are doing?” were removed from the transcript. All other versions

I was able to read— English, French, and Spanish— while not excluding the

above- mentioned utterances, still deviated significantly from the boorish

and openly confrontational style of the Russian diplomat. The English and

French versions replaced the second person address with a politer third per

son,25 and Russian “Глаза- то не отводи! Что ты глаза отводишь?”

(Don’t turn your eyes away! Why are you (ты) turning your eyes away?) was

transformed into “He should not look away. Why is he looking away?” and

“Il ne doit pas détourner les yeux. Pourquoi détourne- il les yeux?,” respec

tively. The Spanish translation— “No debe apartar la mirada. ¿Por qué aparta

la mirada?”— arguably managed to somewhat convey Safronkov’s insolence,

but still adhered to the formal norm of address. In other words, the tran

scription and written translation of Safronkov’s passionate speech squeezed

out its most scandalous (and most likely intended)26 elements completely.

Alekseeva, who trained some of the Russian UN interpreters/translators

who were involved in this situation and is closely familiar with the proce

dures of the UN Department of Translation, interprets this as a very difficult

translational decision: “You see, we talked about patriotism. So it is flourish

ing there. They want Russia to look decent. . . . Since the UN documents,

theoretically, are supposed to be stored forever, they did not want to leave

this for eternity, and chose to smoothen the wording” (2021, emphasis is pro
sodic). Thus, a purposeful diplomatic transgression— and as good of a politi

cal instrument as all the rest— was carefully erased from history by the gate

keepers of Russia’s international legacy. Certainly, such gatekeeping is not a

specifically Russian thing. In her research, Morven Beaton- Thome (2020)

explored similar gatekeeping practices in the context of the EU institutions.

Focusing on the European Union debates on Brexit, she demonstrates how

Nigel Farage’s “strategies of discursive provocation” were discursively policed

in German interpretation by similar institutional gatekeepers. In addition, all my interviewees

agree that the cases when protocol is breached are par

ticularly difficult for an interpreter. Even though an interpreter is supposed

to convey the message completely and accurately, in the situations when

insults and vulgarity pour “for no reason” she or he often chooses to either

soften the insult, or add their own commentary (Muylle 2021).

Political Interpreters as Intercultural Censors and Conduits

Even though political interpreters often present the modern- day relation

ship between themselves and their clients in politics as a business- like trans

action between seemingly equal professionals (H. 2021; Yakimenko 2021),

the benefits different parties reap certainly remain unequal. While interpret

ers get their wages for facilitating communication and serving as transpar

ent “intercultural glass,” political actors also receive the added advantages of

being able to use interpreters as temporal buffers and scapegoats, but also as

loyal intercultural experts who would always cover their back in embarrass

ing situations, even if this requires a little blurring of the intercultural glass.

For instance, when asked how one should translate swearing and obscen

ities that politicians sometimes produce, Kirill Kazakov urged aspiring inter

preters to interpret everything as said, except for the situations when the

political actor “clearly did not mean to insult anyone” (2021, 5:50). To illus
trate his point, Kazakov recalled a situation when a Russian high official,

when asked how he liked the country after arriving to India, responded

that he liked it very much and “was treated like a white man” (приняли

как белого человека) (2021, 9:37). Given his intercultural competence and

historical sensitivity, the interpreter chose not to translate this literally. Thus,

the ingrained and unreflected racism of the Russian idiom (meaning “wel

coming and respectable treatment”) was magically erased by an invisible

(and allegedly neutral) helper. The fundamentally important role of inter

preters as “cultural brokers” in military conflicts and other contexts is also

explored in detail by Sara de Jong ( 2018, 2023, and in this volume).

Sometimes, the role of an intercultural conduit can be rather unpleasant.

Comparing her experiences of working in court with political interpreta

tion, Yakimenko admitted (2021) that she sometimes has ethical problems

with doing the latter. In a court setting, she can easily interpret the most

repulsive and unethical statements, because everything that is being said

goes on record and would be further considered by the judge when they

deliberate on a verdict. However, in an informal political setting, a conser

vative male client who, for instance, cracks a sexist joke in his communication with another male
conservative, expects the interpreter to translate it

not just literally but also wittily and with relish, so that the counterpart

could fully indulge in their shared semantic debauchery. Thus, unlike in

court, unethical statements in a political context not only help to further

strengthen a personal alliance, but the interpreter, even if she is female, is

also supposed to act as (and often chooses to be) an intercultural conduit

helping the two stags bond.

Interpreters as Subtle Political Editors

Even though simultaneous interpretation makes an interpreter more invis

ible, it also forces them to selectively edit the original statements. Rang

ing, or a real- time analysis of a speaker’s statements with an aim to separate

“important” information from “unimportant” information is an essential

skill that every simultaneous interpreter needs to master (Kazakov 2021,

39:00). Indeed, the situations when every word uttered by a political actor

makes it into simultaneous interpretation are exceedingly rare. Partially, this

is because semantics relies on syntax, and it is always necessary to first listen

for some time to understand where the speaker is going with their message

and to be able to render it in a target language. With some languages (e.g.,

German) one must often wait until the very end of the sentence, as a nega

tive particle added as the last word could change the meaning of the whole

sentence entirely. This time lag necessitates reductions. Interpreters under

stand this well. For the best of them, interpretation is never about the words

and always about the message (Muylle 2021). However, some political actors

resist. Muylle mentions that the Russian delegation at the UN includes what

he calls “pointers,” that is, people who sit with the texts of speeches and

make sure that every word from the original speech also makes it into inter

pretation. Yet for him this seems like an aberration, rather than the norm.

At the same time, professional interpreters would never emphasize their

subtle editorship, or attract too much attention to their personae. When

asked to identify the 3– 5 most essential qualities of an excellent interpreter,

three out of four professionals I interviewed mentioned modesty, or “know

ing one’s place,” as Yakimenko put this. One of the internalized wisdoms of

the profession goes that an interpreter must realize that “she is important,

but not the most important one” (2021). Thus, they routinely de- emphasize

their presence and rarely burden their clients with being explicit about the
inner mechanics of the interpretation process and all the subtle contextual decisions they make.
Presumably, in IOs, most of those decisions reproduce

organizational standards, engraved in multiple glossaries and phrasebooks.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I showed how political interpreters/translators have been

policed and marginalized for centuries by statesmen and bureaucracies,

which partially explains the persisting crisis of recognition of interpreters

and translators. I also showed how in the twentieth century a large number

of interpreters/translators were incorporated into the structure of interna

tional institutions that turned them into a hybrid of bureaucrats and generic

service providers. As befits bureaucracies, IOs also tried to efface everything

individual about their employees and practices, as well as displaced inter

preters/translators from the political spectacle. In a way, what happened to

interpreters/translators is similar to what happened to diplomats two cen

turies earlier. Both types of actors were originally (and naturally) positioned

at the very interface of mediating estrangement. Both were routinely mis

trusted from within a national/monolingual worldview, as they did not seem

to be organically tied to the nation/language (Yakimenko notes this as one

of the probable reasons why interpreters experience problems with status).

When it comes to diplomats, with the emergence of the modern state,

rulers started to build elaborate bureaucratic administration systems that (1)

separated the inside of a polity from its outside, and (2) subjugated those

who previously managed estrangement by incorporating them in the state

apparatus and turning them into bureaucrats and paid nomads (Neumann

2011). Interpreters/translators underwent a similar incorporation in the

twentieth century that was mostly carried out by IOs. Made virtually invis

ible in the process, they were put in the service of the hegemonic interna
tional order and invited to oil its wheels.

Yet there is one important difference between the two. If diplomats suc

cumbed to the state in the competition between the higher bourgeoisie and

aristocracy, political interpreters/translators have remained relatively mar

ginalized since the beginning of time. Thus, if we ever want to de- reify the

national paradigm and give more agency and voice to liminal actors who

really know what it means to perform intercultural mediation, while also

remaining free from elite bias, interpreters and translators seem like the most

natural choice.

Notes

1. I would like to thank my research assistants Harrison Mavric and Mariia

Ovcharenko for the competent and indispensable support they provided.

2. For the English version of the meeting records, see United Nations Security

Council, Transcript of the 7921st meeting, April 12, 2017, [Link]

arch/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/PV.7921

3. Here and below such referencing format includes a time stamp from the video.

4. In Norman Shapiro’s words, “translation [is] the attempt to produce a text so

transparent that it does not seem to be translated. A good translation is like a pane

of glass. You only notice that it’s there when there are little imperfections— scratches,

bubbles. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any. It should never call attention to itself” (Sha

piro, cited in Venuti 2008).

5. This problem is relevant for other kinds of translation as well (Venuti 2008).

6. I thank Einar Wigen for helping crystallize this idea.

7. It stands to mention, however, that interpreters feel their own invisibility much

more frequently and acutely than translators, as the former’s work in most cases does

not leave any lasting legacy (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 247– 48).
8. For an overview, see Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, xi– xxviii.

9. In Stephen Greenblatt’s words, “every form of behavior . . . is a strategy: taking

up arms or taking flight is a significant social strategy, but so is staying put, minding

one’s business, turning one’s face to the wall” (2007, 221).

10. This applies to varied semeiotic structures and mechanisms of meaning produc

tion in different languages, as well as to the frequent absence of direct equivalents for

various cultural phenomena in the target language or different degrees of their devel

opment and detail, or both.

11. I thank Mauro Caraccioli for helping formulate this idea.

12. For more examples of application of postcolonial theory to translation/inter

pretation, see Dingwaney and Maier 1995; Bassnett and Trivedi 1999; Tymoczko

1999; Simon and St- Pierre 2000; and Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002

13. For example, Delisle and Woodsworth (2012, 274– 79) describe the political

careers of several notable individuals who started off as political interpreters. Muylle

(2021) also mentions cases when interpreters became ambassadors.

14. Other authors have also suggested that interpreters have some advantages when

they chose to pursue a diplomatic career (e.g., Harris 2003; Delisle and Woodsworth

2012, 278).

15. Muylle retired in 2004 as an honorary director general of the European Com

mission’s Directorate- General for Interpretation. He created and developed this DG

before his retirement. He was a former conference interpreter with almost half a cen

tury of professional experience at the highest political level.

16. First, simultaneous interpretation allows the duration of meetings to be halved

(Roland 1999, 121– 56). Second, when more than a handful of languages are involved,

consecutive interpretation is deemed too cumbersome (Muylle 2021). Third, remote

interpretation allows travel expenses to be reduced (Muylle 2021).

17. Already in the 1970s, UN- affiliated organizations spent from 4 percent to 24

percent of their budgets on translation/interpretation. The UN itself spent 7 percent, while the
amount of documents that required translation was growing alarmingly

quickly (Allen, Sibahi, and Sohm 1980).

18. For an excellent account of the practice of kidnapping locals for the purpose

of turning them into interpreters in the preconquest period, see Julia Costa Lopez’s

chapter in this volume.

19. Both Alekseeva and H. referred to the Eastern Bloc countries.

20. Importantly, Alekseeva (2021) subscribes to the narrow understanding of patri

otism, which implies that an interpreter simply wants to make sure that no “cunning

manipulation against [their country] could be exercised via interpretation [and that

their country] looks transparent.”

21. For the examination procedures, see [Link]

wtype=LE

22. It was also rumored that the emir may have simply “recited the Koran, while

Lawrence extemporized” (MacMillan 2002, 391).

23. Delisle and Woodsworth (2012, 252), for instance, write that British prime

minister Lloyd George and other participants at the San Remo Conference (1920)

preferred interpreter- mediated negotiations to direct negotiations precisely because

during the former they had more time to think.

24. In some cases, the physical removal of simultaneous interpreters from a political

meeting takes extreme forms. At a 1944 conference in Philadelphia, interpreters were

placed in a basement under the speakers’ stage and were provided with twenty- year- old

equipment. They had to simultaneously interpret while listening to the shuffling of

feet above (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012, 253). Kazakov (2021, 32:05) also recalls an

occasion when simultaneous interpretation booths were hidden inside a huge wall of a

temporary pavilion built for a political summit. On the eve of the summit, he and his
partner had to lift every canvas sheet that the wall consisted of to find their workplace.

On the day of the summit, the booths were unexpectedly moved to a different wall

section.

25. Even though in the UN verbatim transcripts first- and second- person pronouns

are appropriate and are often used.

26. Safronkov was reading a prepared text, which is a standard practice for the UN

in contrast to the EU, for instance (Muylle 2021).