Interview:
Bernard Lewis discusses the history of interpreters in the court
of the Ottoman sultans
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
When speaking with an American president, King Abdullah of Jordan, whom we just heard and who is American educated, obviously has no need of an interpreter. But much of what we English speakers hear or read from the Middle East comes through translation. And that is an imperfect process, often by inherent defect, sometimes by design.
Bernard Lewis, the Middle East scholar, has published a collection of essays on interpreting the Middle East, interpreting in the scholarly sense. And the title essay is about the people who translated for and represented the European powers in Istanbul in the heyday of Ottoman Turkey. The essay is called “From Babel to Dragomans”.
Professor BERNARD LEWIS (Middle East Scholar): A dragoman is something more than a mere translator. He is also a sort of go-between. The term was used especially for the people who translated between the foreign diplomats in the Ottoman capital and the Ottoman government. For many centuries, Ottomans disdained to learn the barbarous languages of Europe. And Europeans usually were quite unable to learn the difficult language of the Ottomans. So for communication, they depended on intermediaries, the so-called dragomans.
SIEGEL: So the dragomans are essential to the conduct of diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
Prof. LEWIS: They were an essential part of it, yes.
SIEGEL: You include in your essay, “From Babel to Dragomans”, some examples of how translation operated. It wasn't always very faithful to the text or the intent of the message.
Prof. LEWIS: On the contrary, I would say one finds very often a pattern of systematic purposive mistranslation.
SIEGEL: How so? Give an example.
Prof. LEWIS: I’ll give an example. I mean, the Ottoman sultan saw himself as the lord of the world, with some justification at that time. The sultan is corresponding with Queen Elizabeth of England in the late 16th century, a woman ruler, in itself extraordinary, of an island at the far end of Europe, the wrong end of Europe in terms of the 16th century. And he writes her a letter in which he says to her, as an expression of goodwill, ‘We hope that you will continue to be firm-footed on the path of loyalty and allegiance to our world-embracing imperial throne,' which would be the normal language from an overlord to a tributary. In the translation, this becomes, ‘We hope you will continue our relationship of sincere friendship.’
SIEGEL: (Laughs) So from ‘dear vassal’, it effectively becomes ‘dear fellow sovereign’.
Prof. LEWIS: Exactly. Which would have been quite inconceivable from the point of view of the Ottoman. And the translation back into Turkish no doubt followed the same pattern.
SIEGEL: Well, the dragomans of Istanbul were people who facilitated some degree of communication between East and West.
Prof. LEWIS: Well, they more than facilitated it, they made it possible. Otherwise, it would've been impossible.
SIEGEL: You had to have somebody...
Prof. LEWIS: You had to have somebody. It became a problem when, more and more, the various European governments concerned with communication with the Ottoman Empire came to realize that the dragomans that they were employing were not reliable. So they decided that they must do something about it. And they decided that the only thing to do was to have some of their own people--Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Austrians, Russians--recruited into the diplomatic service and to give them special instruction in Arabic and Persian and Turkish.
SIEGEL: What a radical idea.
Prof. LEWIS: A very radical idea which has still not crossed the Atlantic, as far as I know.
SIEGEL: What does it say about this process of translation between societies that very often those who know the languages are in some way different from the majority of their population; they're people who, for some reason, have been exposed to another...
Prof. LEWIS: Yes.
SIEGEL: ...language in society and, therefore, might have a slightly marginal role in their own society.
Prof. LEWIS: Exactly. And we see this, for example, even in the Munn period(ph). If we look at the translations of press and broadcasts which are offered to the Western reader, some of these are meticulously accurate. But many of them, particularly in the past, were slanted in order not to offend one's employers.
I remember I had occasion once--oh, maybe more than 30 years ago--to compare the translations of Arabic broadcasts prepared for the British government and for the American government, and I noticed that the Arab translators employed by the British government in reporting Arabic broadcasts usually toned down or omitted anything anti-British, but preserved anything anti-American, while those working for the American government usually toned down or omitted anything anti-American, but carefully preserved everything anti-British. Contrasting the two side by side, purporting to be translations of the same broadcast, was very interesting.
You can still see this going on now. If you look at speeches delivered in the Middle East by Middle Eastern rulers or statesmen, look at the original version as delivered to their own people and the English translation provided to the international press. The differences are not coarse or crude; they’re subtle, but nevertheless important.
SIEGEL: Professor Lewis, thank you very much for talking with us once again.
Prof. LEWIS: Thank you. I am delighted to be with you again.
SIEGEL: Bernard Lewis, the author of most recently “From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East”.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
When speaking with an American president, King Abdullah of Jordan, whom we just heard and who is American educated, obviously has no need of an interpreter. But much of what we English speakers hear or read from the Middle East comes through translation. And that is an imperfect process, often by inherent defect, sometimes by design.
Bernard Lewis, the Middle East scholar, has published a collection of essays on interpreting the Middle East, interpreting in the scholarly sense. And the title essay is about the people who translated for and represented the European powers in Istanbul in the heyday of Ottoman Turkey. The essay is called “From Babel to Dragomans”.
Professor BERNARD LEWIS (Middle East Scholar): A dragoman is something more than a mere translator. He is also a sort of go-between. The term was used especially for the people who translated between the foreign diplomats in the Ottoman capital and the Ottoman government. For many centuries, Ottomans disdained to learn the barbarous languages of Europe. And Europeans usually were quite unable to learn the difficult language of the Ottomans. So for communication, they depended on intermediaries, the so-called dragomans.
SIEGEL: So the dragomans are essential to the conduct of diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
Prof. LEWIS: They were an essential part of it, yes.
SIEGEL: You include in your essay, “From Babel to Dragomans”, some examples of how translation operated. It wasn't always very faithful to the text or the intent of the message.
Prof. LEWIS: On the contrary, I would say one finds very often a pattern of systematic purposive mistranslation.
SIEGEL: How so? Give an example.
Prof. LEWIS: I’ll give an example. I mean, the Ottoman sultan saw himself as the lord of the world, with some justification at that time. The sultan is corresponding with Queen Elizabeth of England in the late 16th century, a woman ruler, in itself extraordinary, of an island at the far end of Europe, the wrong end of Europe in terms of the 16th century. And he writes her a letter in which he says to her, as an expression of goodwill, ‘We hope that you will continue to be firm-footed on the path of loyalty and allegiance to our world-embracing imperial throne,' which would be the normal language from an overlord to a tributary. In the translation, this becomes, ‘We hope you will continue our relationship of sincere friendship.’
SIEGEL: (Laughs) So from ‘dear vassal’, it effectively becomes ‘dear fellow sovereign’.
Prof. LEWIS: Exactly. Which would have been quite inconceivable from the point of view of the Ottoman. And the translation back into Turkish no doubt followed the same pattern.
SIEGEL: Well, the dragomans of Istanbul were people who facilitated some degree of communication between East and West.
Prof. LEWIS: Well, they more than facilitated it, they made it possible. Otherwise, it would've been impossible.
SIEGEL: You had to have somebody...
Prof. LEWIS: You had to have somebody. It became a problem when, more and more, the various European governments concerned with communication with the Ottoman Empire came to realize that the dragomans that they were employing were not reliable. So they decided that they must do something about it. And they decided that the only thing to do was to have some of their own people--Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Austrians, Russians--recruited into the diplomatic service and to give them special instruction in Arabic and Persian and Turkish.
SIEGEL: What a radical idea.
Prof. LEWIS: A very radical idea which has still not crossed the Atlantic, as far as I know.
SIEGEL: What does it say about this process of translation between societies that very often those who know the languages are in some way different from the majority of their population; they're people who, for some reason, have been exposed to another...
Prof. LEWIS: Yes.
SIEGEL: ...language in society and, therefore, might have a slightly marginal role in their own society.
Prof. LEWIS: Exactly. And we see this, for example, even in the Munn period(ph). If we look at the translations of press and broadcasts which are offered to the Western reader, some of these are meticulously accurate. But many of them, particularly in the past, were slanted in order not to offend one's employers.
I remember I had occasion once--oh, maybe more than 30 years ago--to compare the translations of Arabic broadcasts prepared for the British government and for the American government, and I noticed that the Arab translators employed by the British government in reporting Arabic broadcasts usually toned down or omitted anything anti-British, but preserved anything anti-American, while those working for the American government usually toned down or omitted anything anti-American, but carefully preserved everything anti-British. Contrasting the two side by side, purporting to be translations of the same broadcast, was very interesting.
You can still see this going on now. If you look at speeches delivered in the Middle East by Middle Eastern rulers or statesmen, look at the original version as delivered to their own people and the English translation provided to the international press. The differences are not coarse or crude; they’re subtle, but nevertheless important.
SIEGEL: Professor Lewis, thank you very much for talking with us once again.
Prof. LEWIS: Thank you. I am delighted to be with you again.
SIEGEL: Bernard Lewis, the author of most recently “From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East”.