ABSTRACT
‘Interpreter’ derives from the Latin interpres, a word used to design agents who moved between different parties or individuals who served as intermediaries, translators or explainers, usually in diplomatic activities. 1 The etymology of interpres is also linked to pretium (price or value). The interpreter was therefore someone who served as a mediator, negotiating terms and prices and often at the centre of a commercial transaction. 2 The first records of ‘interpreter’ in English associate the word to the oral translation of dialogues between speakers of different languages, and to the analysis of legal, religious or scholarly documents. Around 1440, the Promptorium Parvulorom (1440), the first bilingual English–Latin dictionary, translated interpres as ‘Interpretowre or expownere’, relating it to the precise function of explaining or commenting texts or laws. 3 Miles Coverdale's 1535 translation of the Bible used ‘interpreter’ in Genesis to mention an oral translation occurring during a dialogue: ‘They knew not that Joseph understood it, for he spoke unto them by an interpreter’. 4 The same year, in A dialogue of comfort against tribulation, the humanist Thomas More used ‘enterpretors’ to identify Church scholars who commented and analysed the Bible. 5
