María Isabel Alconero Gutiérrez

Translation and Interpreting Training: Breaking Borders Through History

Times have shown that commercial, social, religious or military exchanges were the driving force for intercultural evolution, and they implied the need of a linguistic liaison which was never easy. Translation and interpreting gained importance in those regions with intense exchanges. A good example of this would be the Mediterranean countries, among which we should mention the case of Spain, where the co-existence of Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and the local Romance vernacular language led the Archbishop Raymond of Toledo and the King Alphonse X of Castile to found the Toledo School of Translators in the 12th and 13th centuries. On the other side of the spectrum, the role of translators and interpreters was minimal in those territories where international presence was limited, or even forbidden, as it was the case in Japan during the sakoku, a period of over two centuries (1603-1868) under the Tokugawa shogunate. The consequence was the virtually complete isolation of this Asian archipelago. Nowadays, the digital revolution, the importance of social networks and even the COVID pandemic have marked our reality as translators and interpreters. The span they will have in our profession…, only time will tell.

BIOGRAPHY