INTERPRETERS IN THE EAST.
IT is difficult to estimate the share which mere difference of language may have in embittering, if not creating, international disputes, and in delaying and hindering their settlement. In European diplomacy, this difficulty is not greatly felt, though it exists in ordinary international inter- course, and gives rise to much of the dislike which different nationalities entertain towards each other. But there can be no doubt that it is one of the principal causes of the friction which, in greater or less measure, has always accompanied the political intercourse of East and West. The sort of mutual antipathy which Orientals and Occidentals feel for each other, if somewhat intensified by diversity of race and religion, is chiefly the outcome of a want of mutual comprehension of their respec- tive civilisations. Christianity is an Oriental religion, and the main concepts of life and conduct are the same in civilised Asia' and in Europe. But our political organisation we owe to Rome, our science, philosophy, and literature, to Greece ; and the political spirit of Rome, no less than the intellectual spirit of Greece, was distinctly opposed to Orientalism. Our modes of thought have informed our phraseology, and this; again, has reacted upon ideas, until the divergence both of thought and speech between Asia and Europe has become so great, that it is hardly possible to translate other than mere narrative or descriptive matter from an European into an Asiatic tongue. All that can be done is to find the Asiatic ideas that most nearly answer to the European ones, and to clothe the former in fitting Asiatic phraseology. The ordinary interpreter, the familiar dragoman of the Levant, is wholly unable to do this. Speaking his own language, Arabic, Turkish, or Persian, for his own purposes, lie resorts without difficulty to the circumlocution, the imagery, the picturesque metaphor, and time-honoured allusion that ex- plain and illustrate his meaning, and aid in conveying it fully and impressively to his native interlocutor. But he can only translate facts. He is unable to realise to himself the concepts of the European mind, their precision is unfamiliar to him, their relative importance escapes him, and hd attempts a more or less verbal or direct rendering, that at the best gives but a dim notion of what is wished to be conveyed. It is of the first necessity that an interpreter should thoroughly comprehend, not merely the words, but the spirit of the communication he has to make. Compare the proclamation of the Khedive with that of Sir Garnet Wolseley. The sense intended to be con- veyed by the latter could not be conveyed to an Arab, without resorting to the phraseology of the former ; in other words, the translation would have to be a paraphrase. Rendered, as it probably was, in a style as bald and precise as Arabic admits of, it doubtless made no impression whatever. Those who have had to do with trials in a Levantine Consular Court know what a mockery the interpretation of native evidence usually is. Anything like cross-examination of witnesses is altogether impossible, and the plaintiff or defendant has to rely upon the number and general reputation_ of those whom he can persuade or bribe into testifying in his favour. In some of such Courts British subjects may be tried for their lives, have been so tried —nay, convicted and executed—upon evidence awkwardly got at, imperfectly rendered, and subjected to no efficient test. In the Levant, where the dragomans are nearly always Syrians or Armenians, the Legations are not better off than the Consular Courts. The misapprehensions, the delays, the dangers in- cident to such a state of things, can easily be imagined. The absence of the proper honorific may give offence, at a critical
moment ; a slur or an insult may pass undetected, and the real tenor of a diplomatic communication be thus wholly missed. For the higher diplomatic work at Constantinople, we are, fortunately, well provided. The Oriental Secretary to our Embassy is neither a Syrian nor an Armenian, but an Englishman, of great ability and long experience. To his oareful and intelligent interpretation is due no small measure of the success of our recent diplomacy at the Porte. But, if the Foreign-Office list is to be trusted, he is the only Eng- lish official interpreter attached to our Legations or Con- sulates in Turkey, Egypt, and the Levant. Last year, it is true, four students were sent to Constantinople to be trained as interpreters ; and the foundations were thus laid of a regularly organised service, such as exists in China and Japan. In those countries, every member of the Consular Service begins his career as a student-interpreter. From time to time, he is called upon to pass an examination in the language and literature of the country, and upon his suc- cess at these examinations his promotion depends. By the time he attains to the higher grades, he is pretty sure to possess a good knowledge of the spoken tongue, and a more or less efficient mastery of the written language as well. No native interpreters have for many years been required, even to decipher documents in the difficult character used in both countries, and some of the best known among Oriental scholars are members of the Consular Services of China or Japan. The Consular Reports from those countries are much the most com- plete and most valuable of all that are published by the Foreign Office, and abundantly testify to the high qualities of their authors, and to the excellence of the training to which, from their first entry into the Service, they have been subjected.
It is not too much to say that the comparative smoothness of our political intercourse with China and Japan during the last decade or two, notwithstanding the number and importance of the questions that have presented themselves for discussion, both at Pekin and Yedo, has been in great measure due to the perfect and absolutely trustworthy interpretation which our Ministers at both Courts—who themselves first made their mark as interpret- ers—have had at their command. In what may be termed the Mediterranean East, our diplomacy has had no such advantage. The members of our Embassies and Consulates in Turkey and the Levant have had none of the special training which has made the Consular Services of China and Japan what they are, —no whit inferior in tradition to the Civil Service of India, and, within more restricted limits, likely to obtain an equal prestige. It is not simply by reason of his command of the language that the British Consular officer in China or Japan is so valuable a public servant,—his official education has made him familiar with the life and thought of the people among whom his functions are exercised, and thus added immensely to his usefulness and trustworthiness as an adviser. The appointment of four student-interpreters at Constantinople is a step in the right direction, but at least three or four times that number will be necessary, to furnish the materials for a reconstruction of the Diplomatic and Consular Services in the Levant upon the model of the services that have done such good work east of Singapore. There were last year twenty student-interpreters at Pekin and Tokio, to supply the Legations and twenty-seven Consulates and Vice-Consulates, In Turkey, Egypt, and the Levant there are one Embassy and one Consulate-General, which practically. amounts to a Legation, and forty-five paid Consulates and Vice- Consulates, besides a number of Consular agencies. A corps of four students is altogether inadequate to furnish the neces- sary succession of trained officials, if the reconstruction of the Levant Service upon the Far-East model is seriously contem- plated. At the present juncture, such a reconstruction is more than ever desirable. In Egypt, where probably for years to come we shall have the most delicate and difficult functions to perform, not a single British official is sufficiently acquainted with Arabic to act as an efficient interpreter. Not one has made, so far as is known, any special study of the history, literature, social condition, or mental life of the people. The pages of the " Transactions of the Asiatic Societies of Shanghai and Tokio," on the other hand, teem with the results of the labour and re- search of membersof the Consular services in those countries. The revolt of Arabi, and the massacres at Alexandria, undoubtedly took our representatives by surprise, and the causes of Arabi's popularity are only slowly coming to light.. A similar condition of official ignorance would be almost impossible in China or Japan, where both the means and the inclination to study the people, their past and present, their wants and aspirations, are furnished and fostered by the Consular system in vogue. Yet Chinese and Japanese are languages far less easy of acquire- ment than Arabic, the structure of which is much more akin to that of European languages. Vernacular Arabic is indeed extremely easy, infinitely more so than spoken Chinese, with its various tones and perplexing dialects. What wo want in our official intermediaries in Oriental countries, in addition to a fitness for what may be termed their mechanical duties, is a spirit of sympathy with native feeling and opinion coexistent with the honesty, precision, and instructed intelligence of the well-trained European. Such a spirit can only be created by a direct study of native thought, recorded and con- temporaneous. True sympathy, as distinguished from mere sentimentality, is the outcome of a more or less complete knowledge of its subject. Any one who is familiar with the Par East will readily admit that much more is known of the populations east of Singapore than of those of the Mediter- ranean East, with whom, nevertheless, the relations of Europe have been both closer and older. No national dislike of the foreigner exists in China or Japan 'at all comparable with the antipathy felt by the Moslem to the Christian. The former is as amenable to logic as the latter, but he goes fir more wrong in his major premisses. To combat these, even though indi- rectly, should be a part of the special task of our representa- tives and their subordinates ; and the necessary equipment for the work is a knowledge of what their true import and in- fluence are. Such a knowledge can only be attained by patient study, under special training ; but no subordinate member of our Diplomatic Staff in Turkey and the Levant should be without it. In the East, the officials represent the people far more completely than in the West ; but they have commonly all the defects, and have lost some of the good qualities, of their nations. It is not safe to rely wholly, or even mainly, upon their information, or their opinions ; the feeling of the people must be learnt from such sources as are . available. As matters are, we .know just what the dragoman is able or willing to gather and impart ; and the dragoman is never sufficiently instructed to know what facts are worth collecting, and not always suffi- ciently honest to tell disagreeable truths. He is, indeed, a mere mechanism, which is neither independent nor regular in its action ; and the sooner he is replaced by a properly trained English official, the better. Our dealings with Orientals can never be just, in the absence of an acquaintance with their sympathies and prejudices; nor our intercourse with them satisfactory, save through intermediaries at once honest, im- partial, and well-informed. The mere function of interpreta- tion is in itself of high importance, but what is still more important, is that through our officials in Eastern countries we should possess trustworthy and accurate accounts of the vary- ing phases of popular feeling, of the influence, of leading men, and even of the intrigues of Courts and Cabinets. The com- pletest diplomatic mechanism for this purpose is that which for some twenty years has worked so well in the Far East ; and the sooner the system is fully introduced into the nearer East, the better we shall be .enabled to foresee and guard against such a storm as the one we have just weathered so well.
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