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Part of
Towards an Atlas of the History of Interpreting: Voices from around the world
Edited by Lucía Ruiz Rosendo and Jesús Baigorri-Jalón
[Benjamins Translation Library 159] 2023
► pp. 193–211

Chapter 8
Interpreters of mission

How indigenous peoples shaped mission projects across Australia and the Pacific

| Australian National University

Focusing on the histories of interpretation in mission contexts across Australia and the Pacific, this chapter reveals that wherever they operated, missionaries depended on the cooperation of local intermediaries. Interpreters were vital. While this has long been noted in Pacific histories, scholars are only recently discovering similarities in Australia. Recent scholarship is also considering what Indigenous people themselves sought to achieve for their communities through interpreting, beyond resistance to or management of colonisers on their lands. The chapter concludes with three examples of Aboriginal interpreters who shaped the establishment of missions on their Country in various parts of North Australia in the twentieth century. It finds that interpreters upheld their cultural obligations to Country through their linguistic work.

Keywords: Australia, Pacific, missions, colonisation, interpreting, Christianity
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Interpreting and translating in the Pacific and Australian mission historiography
  • Country and interpreting at three North Australian missions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.159.08rad
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