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Interpreters as key agents in reframing interwar power relations
The Paris Peace Conference as narrative turning point
Elena Aguirre FernĂĄndez Bravo and AsunciĂłn Taboada Lanza
Introduction
In diplomatic negotiations, âan interpreter who knows not only the language but also the politics, personalities and culture of a particular situation can be a unique assetâ (Albright, 2008, p. 71). Translators who deal with documentation at international conferences are key in spreading the main ideas of those events. The access to information in different languages through interpreters and translators, which we nowadays take for granted, was a privilege not so long ago. In the dawn of the 20th century, only the languages of hegemonic powers were spoken at international conferences, and resulting documents were produced in those languages only. The Paris Peace Conference and subsequent creation of the League of Nations (LoN) are a good example thereof: in addition to their economic and military capabilities, the winners of the First World War used the officiality of their languages as a way of imposing their soft power, thus persuading others to do what they wanted without force or coercion (Nye, 1990), what Bourdieu (1991, p. 170) would in turn call âsymbolic powerâ.
After the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference (1919) enabled the Allies to negotiate conditions for peace with the defeated nations from the Central Powers (Sanz DĂaz, 2009, p. 297). Although the allied powers numbered a total of 32 states, only five had significant weight in decision-making processes. Represented in negotiations by Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States, the Allies began their gatherings in January 1919. Meetings were led by the Committee of Four, integrated by Woodrow Wilson, Georges Benjamin Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (Neila HernĂĄndez, 2009, p. 330). Countries defeated in the conflict had no voice in meetings, leaving their future exclusively in the hands of the winning powers.
By virtue of this conference, several international treaties were drafted and signed with the purpose of reorganising world order and redistributing power in the aftermath of the conflict. One of them is the well-known Treaty of Versailles, signed in Versailles in 1919 by over 50 countries and which contains, among others, the conditions that would have to be met to put an end to the hostilities resulting from war (Ibid., p. 331). By means of this document, and in association with other treaties and protocols, a key international body in international relations was created: the LoN, forerunner to the current United Nations.
When diplomatic relations began in Europe, the official language par excellence was Latin (Freeman & Marks, 2018). It was not until the Enlightenment that a change in paradigm occurred. In the Golden Age of France, the taste for knowledge and reason fostered great technical and cultural progress that made the French language burst onto the international scene (Gore-Booth, 1979, p. 38), due to the strong diplomatic activity developed by France during the reign of Louis XIV and the development of the French diplomatic service by Cardinal Richelieu (Ostrower, 1965, pp. 281â2).
French diplomats and politicians believed that their claim for their mother tongue to become the official language at the 1919 Peace Conference made sense: not only had French quickly consolidated as the language of diplomacy due to its precision and elegance but, on top of that, the conference was to be held in Paris. However, other parties attending the conference did not agree with this imposition. British and American representatives claimed the rights of their language to be official, arguing that it represented a large majority of population at the summits and stressing the importance of these two countriesâ actions in the Allied victory. It was argued that a simplified English, common to the United States and Great Britain, could be the Conference language (Ostrower, 1965, p. 312).
Such were the puzzles emerging from the lack of understanding that even Esperanto was proposed as official language, but it was eventually decided that both English and French would be used at summits and become official languages of all of the institutions derived from the conference (Baigorri JalĂłn, 2014, p. 39). This dichotomy made it a priority to hire interpreters to facilitate an otherwise impossible communication. Although the only official languages for consecutive interpretation were these two, delivering a speech in a different language was allowed, but interpretation would be at the expense of the representative (Universidade de Vigo, 2020), and the cost of translating minutes to other languages would have to be borne by the country concerned (Shenton, 1933, p. 379).
Throughout these pages, we will argue that languages (and, therefore, translators and interpreters) can serve as tools to subtly project power, as we believe was the case in this historical turning point. Based on Van Dijk (2009) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), we will analyse the role and impact of interpreters in political leadership, diplomatic negotiations and power dynamics during the interwar years.
Data and methodology
In his studies on the impact of postmodernity on the human condition, Lyotard (1979) refers to the importance of grand narratives or metanarratives in giving a totalizing, comprehensive account of historical events or even social phenomena based on the appeal to universal truths or values. Metanarratives are used by powerful entities (countries or groups) to legitimise authority, power or even social traditions, and they influence how people see and understand the world. Even though Lyotard refers to narratives such as Christianity during the Middle Ages, his line of argumentation could be applied to other historical moments to study the two-way relation between power and language, more specifically, the exercise of power through language.
We have defined an important milestone in the history of the old continent as our research scope: the interwar period and the creation of the LoN. The rationale behind this choice is that the Paris Peace Conference was a crucial landmark for international relations and for conference interpreting. On one hand, it paved the way for drafting treaties that gave birth to the LoN, a decisive international institution which eventually became an international body of reference in solving disputes and establishing common rules for countries. On the other hand, this historical period is particularly meaningful for conference interpreting, since the uproar on the international scene contributed to the institutionalisation of the profession in the political arena, this being one of the first occasions in which the interpreterâs role was made visible to the very powerful stakeholders involved in decision-making processes.
In this context, though, despite the constellation of countries involved, it is conspicuous that only English and French ended up playing a prominent and influential role as official languages. Building on Lyotardâs ideas, we will argue that, after the First World War, the dominant narrative that permeated international relations was the one told by the winners of the conflict and that this was partly possible due to the choice of French and English as the main working languages on the international stage and, indirectly, thanks to the role played by diplomatic interpreters who took part in interwar conferences, meetings and negotiations, since, in the same way meta-narratives create a reality, languages are also systems that shape values, interests and identities, thus structuring our understanding: âhow we talk about the world influences the society we create, the knowledge we celebrate and despise, and the institutions we buildâ (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 21). In the following pages, we will:
- (1)delve into the reciprocal dynamics between language and power, taking some core ideas of CDA as theoretical framework;
- (2)analyse the role of interpreters in the diplomatic negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles and, subsequently, in reframing interwar politics, highlighting their relevance in co-constructing the metanarrative of the time;
- (3)emphasise the importance of language not only in shaping reality but also in exerting soft power: first, by exploring the presence of English, French and German, official languages of the main interwar actors, in a corpus of international communicative events that took place during the interwar period and in the first half of the Second World War (the years 1918â1943); second, by analysing the pragmatic dimension of political communication in a selection of these texts, identifying salient examples of language uses that can be linked to the strategic functions identified by Chilton and Schäffner (2006, pp. 311â3): coercion/resistance, legitimisation/delegitimisation, and representation/misrepresentation.
Our corpus compiles 47 covenants, treaties and minutes which have been obtained from various sources (Siepmann, 1920; Gregory, 1921; World Peace Foundation, 1921; Walsh, 1925; United Nations, 1949; United Nations, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d; Library of Congres...
