Shooting the Messenger: The Case of the Interpreter in Conflict Zones

By Maha El-Metwally

As conference interpreters, we know that the real start of simultaneous interpreting was at the Nuremberg trials in 1945. Until then, consecutive interpreting was the modus operandi. However, it became obvious soon after the Allies created the International Military Tribunal after World War II that consecutive interpreting was not going to be the suitable mode for the Tribunal. It was charged with an explicit mission: “fair and expeditious trials” of accused Nazi war criminals.[1] In other words, the trials required a faster technique to help expedite the procedures. Transmitting multiple languages in real time without the suitable technology was certainly a challenge. With the help of IBM, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Leon Dostert sorted out the technology issue by developing the microphones and headsets needed to clearly transmit the trial combination of languages. But there remained the issue of finding the human beings who could listen and speak at the same time for the system to work. Monitors were dispatched to look for new talent. Interpreters were tested for language skills in their home countries then sent to Nuremberg to be tested for simultaneous skills. Patricia vander Elst, Siegfried Ramler, Virginia von Schon and Ernest Peter Uiberall are some of the interpreters who were chosen for this very important task.

Many of them continued to work as simultaneous interpreters after the trials thereby becoming the mothers and fathers of the conference interpreting profession. That is why it came as a shock to me to learn that many of their colleagues in Asia were prosecuted during the Japanese war crimes trials.

In January 2018, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Dr Kayoko Takeda, Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the College of Intercultural Communication at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. Dr Takeda wrote her PhD dissertation on socio-political aspects of interpreting at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946-1948). One of her special interests is the case of interpreters who worked with the Japanese army during World War II and what became of them during the Japanese war crime trials.

She started the lecture by showing that three groups of interpreters were involved in the trials; they were court interpreters, witnesses or defendants. They included Taiwanese, Korean, American and Canadian Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans or Japanese Canadians). In the case of the latter group, they had dual nationality and it was rather common for Japanese American and Japanese Canadian families to send their children to Japan for their education there. Some of them joined the Japanese army out of their own free will while others were stranded in Japan due to the war and conscripted as interpreters. It may be worth mentioning that there are Nisei who worked with the Allies. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, the American President signed an Executive Order that resulted in the forced relocation of nearly 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps.

As the US army became acutely aware of the need for more Nisei linguists for military intelligence, more than 6,000 Nisei, including hundreds from the camps, were recruited and received six months of rigorous training at the Military Intelligence Service Language School.

They were then sent to serve in the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service and in other units as translators, interpreters, interrogators or code breakers.[2]

As with prosecuting Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal prosecuted military and political leaders in war-time Japan. There were also other trials held in other parts of Asia where less senior perpetrators of war crimes were tried. Interpreters were among the defendants in those trials. This table shows a number of trials that each of the Allied countries held and how many interpreters were convicted and even executed.

 

Presiding Country	Interpreters Prosecuted	Interpreters Convicted	Interpreters Executed
UK	42	41	7
China	20	18	11
US	18	18	4
The Netherlands	14	14	6
The Philippines	6	6	0
France	4	4	0
Australia	3	0	0
Total	107	101	28

 

At Yokohama, the U.S. Army conducted more than 300 war-crimes trials through 1948. More than 90% involved prisoner mistreatment. American prosecutors focused on Ofuna, a secret interrogation camp run by the Japanese Imperial Navy for pilots and other high value prisoners. “Using affidavits and testimony from former prisoners, prosecutors depicted a grim world where men were broken through physical and psychological cruelty.”[3] It is no wonder than in many trials, witness statements by former prisoners of war were used to convict perpetrators, including interpreters.

The interpreters were in close contact with the victims as they interpreted for their superiors. For the victims, they were speaking the language of evil. They rendered the oppressive and tyrannical orders of the occupier in the victims’ languages, which left a lasting impression.

This could be seen very clearly in the words of Eric Lomax, a British Army officer who was taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese army. His story was featured in a book and a movie called ‘The Railway Man’. He said that he hated the interpreter more than the Kempeitai (military police) officer who tortured him because ‘it was his voice that grated on and that would give [him] no rest’.

It is clear that to the victims, the interpreters were seen as the face and voice of the oppressor and not as a neutral messenger.

In addition, interpreters in occupied areas – including those areas occupied by Japan in WWII have no choice with regard to their visibility to local people. Since they can speak the language of the occupier, they are better able to communicate with the occupier than other locals. The occupier may choose to use them as propaganda material to demonstrate successful cases of local cooperation. The interpreters in that case have no choice with regard to their visibility which had fatal consequences for some of them.[4]

One may wonder why these interpreters were prosecuted and in some cases executed while they were only doing their job. This was exactly one of the main arguments the interpreters used when defending themselves. Add to this that they could not afford to refuse the orders of their superiors. They would have faced martial courts had they done that. Some interpreters said they tried to protect prisoners of war they were interpreting for by slapping them during the interrogation to prevent much harsher assaults by the guards.

I could immediately see similarities between the perception of interpreters as collaborators and traitors post WWII and the case of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters nowadays. Their work for western armies stigmatised them as traitors in the eyes of some local groups. As a result, many of them and their families faced threats, abduction and even death.

Professor Takeda raised some valid points that are relevant to interpreters in conflict zones today. Two in particular stand out:

• Under the military code of absolute obedience to orders of superiors, can interpreters refuse to be part of unlawful acts such as torturing a prisoner of war to obtain information?
• What is the interpreter’s role and code of conduct in conflict zones?

A good start in looking at these issues is the “Conflict Zone Field Guide for Civilian Translators/Interpreters and Users of Their Services”, which was produced by the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), the International Federation of Translators (FIT), and Red T. That document is a guide to the basic rights, responsibilities, and practices those organisations recommend to translators, interpreters and users of their services. It applies to translators and interpreters serving as field linguists for the armed forces, journalists, NGOs, and other organizations in conflict zones. Answers to these questions could help start the process of defining the interpreter’s role in conflict zones so that the messenger no longer faces the risk of getting shot.

 

[1] Gaiba, F. (1998). The origins of simultaneous interpretation: The Nuremberg trial. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

[2] Takeda, K. (2007, January). Nisei linguists during WWII and the occupation of Japan. The ATA Chronicle. doi: https://isg.urv.es/library/papers/nisei_linguists.pdf

[3] Bravin, J. (2005, April 7). What War Captives Faced In Japanese Prison Camps, And How U.S. Responded. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 6, 2018, from https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/SB111265072445397621.htm

[4] Takeda, K. (2014). The Visibility of Collaborators: Snapshots of Wartime and Post-war Interpreters (A. Fernandez-Ocampo & M. Wolf, Eds.). In Framing the Interpreter: Towards a Visual Perspective. London and New York: Routledge.

 

***Previous versions of this article were published in the May-June 2018 issue of the ITI Bulletin and in the AIIC Blog (May 2018). Posted with permission from the author.

 

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Maha El-Metwally is a conference interpreter for the languages: Arabic (A), English (B), French and Dutch (C). She works for a wide range of international organizations, including the European Institutions and the United Nations. She is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) and the American Translators Association (ATA). She is also a Board member and member of the Admissions Committee of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI).

Maha’s most recent degree is an MA in interpreter training from the University of Geneva. She is associated with a number of universities both in the UK and abroad where she gives professionalization talks. She  teaches Conference Interpreting at the University of Surrey.

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Public domain image of defendants listening at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg. Credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.