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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. 268–287

Chapter 11
When the armies went back home

Local interpreters and the politics of protection

| Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of London UK
Research on interpreting in war has investigated the role played by local civilians recruited by the Army as linguistic mediators. This chapter explores the aftermath of war for these local interpreters in the case of the conflict in Afghanistan, using the seven-year long debates on their fate in the UK, France and Denmark. In the arguments around the politics of protection, interpreting is located in three discursive spaces: at the supranational level, within the specificities of NATO multilateral operations on the ground, and in the space of individual nation-state agendas. In the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, the Chapter argues, the greater public visibility of local interpreters did not materially change the ways in which interpreting in war was perceived.
Keywords: Afghanistan, asylum, civilian, conflict, Denmark, France, local interpreters, NATO, UK, veteran
Article outline
  • The supranational space
  • Interpreting and multilateral NATO operations
  • Interpreting and the national space
  • Ex-interpreters and the politics of immigration
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.159.11foo
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