Afterword Interpreters of Empire: Translation, Mediation, and Commensuration in the Early Modern World

Abstract:This rich set of papers introduces readers to a thriving field of inquiry: the history of interpreters and interpreting in their varying entanglement with imperial projects across the early modern globe. It speaks to this field's vibrancy, showcasing how it has engaged a range of historiographies, methodologies, and conceptual tools from translation studies and linguistic anthropology to social history and postcolonial theory over the past few decades. In all four studies, insights about interpreters and the work of interpreting simultaneously also shed light on the wider settings in which interpreting took place and on the political, economic, and spiritual projects interpreters served, often under deeply coercive terms. Indeed, all four essays help clarify how the religious, commercial, juridical, and administrative facets of imperial conquest were entwined in the work of linguistic mediation.