Contracting and Working with Interpreters. The wartime linguists.

Modern-day peace support operations are increasingly multilingual and multinational and have seen an extended use of local civilians for language-related tasks. If their role as interpreters, language assistants and/or “fixers” has been explored by interpreting and translation studies in the last two decades, then their recruitment and management have largely been overlooked in military settings. This chapter aims to identify the key challenges posed by language and cultural support in modern-day peace-support operations using the macro categories of recruitment, employment, training, and demobilisation, with a short review of the legal status of civilian language and cultural advisers accompanying armed forces. This chapter adopts an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together interpreting and military studies and using both qualitative data from structured interviews and empirical observations from conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. The chapter focuses on armed forces operating under the United Nations with peacekeeping and peace enforcement mandates, but its findings and recommendations can be extended to national contingents and coalitions. Ultimately, the chapter aims to shed light on the language challenges posed by modern-day international and multilingual peace-support operations, contribute to establishing clear standard operating procedures (SOPs) and provide knowledge that can be helpful in designing future rules of engagement (ROE).