Framing the Interpreter

Towards a visual perspective

Situations of conflict offer special insights into the history of the interpreter figure, and specifically the part played in that history by photographic representations of interpreters.

This book analyses photo postcards, snapshots and press photos from several historical periods of conflict, associated with different photographic technologies and habits of image consumption: the colonial period, the First and Second World War, and the Cold War. The book’s methodological approach to the "framing" of the interpreter uses tools taken primarily from visual anthropology, sociology and visual syntax to analyse the imagery of the modern era of interpreting. By means of these interpretative frames, the contributions suggest that each culture, subculture or social group constructed its own representation of the interpreter figure through photography.

The volume breaks new ground for image-based research in translation studies by examining photographic representations that reveal the interpreter as a socially constructed category. It locates the interpreter’s mediating efforts at the core of the human sciences.

This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in translation and interpreting studies, as well as to those working in visual studies, photography, anthropology and military/conflict studies.