ABSTRACT
The research for this book has yielded documents identifying over a thousand
individuals (although the total number of names quoted in the study is around 300) who acted as interpreters for both warring sides. Based on a variety of fragmentary sources, a series of brief individual or collective stories is presented in order to illustrate the cases of some of the interpreters from both sides (the Soviet advisers and the International Brigades on the loyalist side, and the Condor Legion and the Irish Brigade on the rebels’ side). Among those stories, the author highlights that over 50 per cent of the 200 interpreters who accompanied the Soviet contingent of advisers and trainers throughout the war were women – a truly exceptional occurrence in war situations until the 1930s and also later.
