Publié le 25 février 2020–Mis à jour le 9 mai 2022
“He was always the interpreter of the SS, never of the prisoners.”
The ambiguity of interpreting in national socialist concentration camps
Date(s)
le 7 octobre 2022
16h-18h
Lieu(x)
Bâtiment Ida Maier (V)
salle 210
In Nazi concentration camps communication was vital for the prisoners’ survival. This lecture will focus on the ambiguous functions of interpreting between perpetrators and victims and the blurring boundaries between them. Sketching the “social field of the concentration camp” with the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of power and practice will contribute to unfolding the power relations between the various nationalities involved in the communication processes which shaped the “daily life” of the camp inmates. These questions will be explored on the basis of a series of survivor accounts which feature interpreting situations in concentration and death camps.
Michaela Wolf is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation Studies, University of Graz. Areas of teaching and research interest include translation sociology, cultural studies and translation, translation and interpreting history, and translation and visual anthropology. She is the author of The Habsburg Monarchy’s Many-Languaged Soul: Translating and Interpreting, 1848-1918 (2015), and the editor of Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps (2016). Her present research focus is on interpreting and translating in Nazi concentration camps and on communication among the Interbrigades of the Spanish Civil War.