“You Don’t Make War Without Knowing Why”

Abstract

This article examines the nature of the relationship between interpreters and the US military, including the dual role of interpreter as combatant that emerges in the context of violent conflict. It considers the different motivations behind the decision to interpret in the war in Iraq, some related to the social history of Iraq and others to the economic and political conditions created by the war itself. In the absence of an autonomous professional identity, it suggests that interpreters are positioned within the social/ institutional frame of the military-political field. This suggests the possibility that, like the military personnel with whom they work, interpreters will be inclined to exercise ethical judgement with respect to the war within the framework of military ethics as currently constituted in the US military. The article seeks to demonstrate that in war interpreters, like combatants, function simultaneously as free agents and embodied conduits for the political and military institutions they agree to serve. As such, they become de facto players in a conflict which they may not choose but which they sustain both morally and instrumentally. Finally, it argues that in war an ethics of interpreting largely loses its power to conceal the undeniability of interpreter agency.

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