War

Traditionally, scholarship in the field tended to focus on the benign aspects of conflict, on the place of language intermediaries in the aftermath of war, their role in peace-making and diplomacy, or in the postwar administration of justice. In the wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, military needs for translation and interpreting were initially met by men and women recruited from the local communities, civilians who in general had received no training in the skills of translating and interpreting. Beyond the positioning of the language intermediary, the experiences of war encouraged a radical reappraisal of the broader role of translation in situations of conflict. Studies on the British military in the Second World War demonstrated how including translation and interpreting within our narratives of war inevitably develops our understanding of some of the key institutions involved. More fundamentally perhaps, the rapidly changing nature of warfare itself will influence the role of languages within it.