ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the book, a case study of interpreters in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), widely recognized as an international conflict and a prelude to World War II. Although the war in Spain has attracted a great deal of attention from international historians over the last eight decades (with over 50,000 works published in many languages), the issue of the role of interpreters and interpreting has been absent from the conventional historiography until very recently, and this book is the first research monograph on the subject. The work is described as a hybrid research field where history, interpreting studies, and sociology of the professions blend. Primary and secondary sources for the research include archives located in several countries and memoirs published by interpreters or users of interpreting during the war and afterwards, as well as direct references from some of the interpreters’ children, who have kindly contributed records, including private photographs.
