Description:
The act of interpretation has been central to Western American history. At every historical juncture, interpreters were active and present--conveying meaning between people speaking mutually unintelligible languages, bartering for goods and power along borders, and translating intentions from gestures, acts, and words. While research on interpreters within zones of cultural exchange has grown among scholars of early modern Europe and Asia, the historiography of interpreters of the American West remains deficient.
Translating Past to Present offers a new perspective on the historical significance of interpretation and translation. This collection explores how the current sparse historiography relates to a lack of transparency about interpretive acts, both in historical and contemporary practices, and calls attention to the subjectivity of interpretive acts and historians' role in shaping how historical messages are represented. By summoning interpreters from the margins of history, Translating Past to Present spans broad geographies and chronologies to provide a long-overdue examination of the practices of interpretation in the American West.Review Quotes: "Brilliantly conceived. Translating Past to Present encourages a level of awareness about the work in which historians engage that will both inspire and deepen our own understanding of the perspectives we bring to our research and writing. It also alerts us--with a hearty dose of good humor and occasional irony--to just what can go wrong with the interpretive process and the complex misunderstandings to which this can give rise. One can hear the echoes of the wonderful conversations that produced this collection of essays as one reads!"--Andrea Geiger, author of Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands, 1867-1945