Abstracts
Abstract
Conference interpreting began at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where the League of Nations (LN) and its offsprings, the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization (ILO), were designed as tools of a new diplomacy by conferences. This meant the end of the virtual monopoly of French as the language of diplomacy and the presence of interpreters mediating between languages. This paper examines the context of the 1919 Washington International Labor Conference (ILC), the interpreting services, the interpreters’ working conditions, and proposes some conclusions. Sources include published records of the plenary meetings of the Washington ILC and unpublished documents from the Personnel files and other material from the archives of the ILO and the LN in Geneva.
Keywords/Mots-clés:
- conference interpreting,
- interpretation history,
- interpreters’ working conditions,
- official languages
Résumé
L’interprétation de conférence a débuté en 1919 à la Conférence de la paix de Paris où la Ligue des Nations (LN) et ses organes, la Cour permanente de justice internationale et l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT), ont été conçus comme les instruments d’une nouvelle diplomatie qui exercerait désormais au moyen de conférences. C’est alors qu’a pris fin le quasi-monopole du français comme langue de la diplomatie et que sont apparus les interprètes, médiateurs interlinguistiques. Cet article examine le contexte de la Conférence internationale du travail (CIT) à Washington en 1919, les services d’interprétation et les conditions de travail des interprètes, et propose quelques conclusions. Les sources consultées comprennent les procès-verbaux publiés des réunions plénières de la CIT et une série de documents non publiés issus des fichiers du personnel et des archives de l’OIT et de la LN à Genève.
Appendices
References
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