Inter-area/Border Crossing

Organized Panel Session

(2) - Interpreting Exile: Penal Translators from Indochina in the Global French Empire

From Equatorial French Africa to the penal colony of New Caledonia, the French administration of Indochina used various territories within the vast expanse of the French colonial empire as locales of exile for Indochinese deportees of differing backgrounds.  However, virtually all of these 8000 prisoners could not speak a word of French.  How did the French colonial regime deal with non-French speaking prisoners transported to territories with no means of mutual communication? How did they staff overseas French territories with interpreters capable of translating the numerous written and spoken languages of Indochina? How did they manage to translate the writings, letters and petitions of these prisoners?  As two case studies, this paper also explores the role of Vietnamese interpreters in the penal regimes of Reunion island and the French Antilles and the contested – and ambiguous - ways in which interpreters were used.

Speaker(s)

• LP

  Lorraine Paterson

  University of Leicester, United Kingdom