The ideal conflict zone interpreter. Military perspectives and perceptions of interpreters' skills and attitudes

Although the armed forces generally prefer to use military interpreters, most of the language support on the ground in recent conflicts has been provided by locally recruited civilians. They are described as lacking the necessary skills and professionalism for the job. Even though defining the expectations about civilian interpreters would be essential for their recruitment and training, what exactly these skills are and what actually constitutes the ideal interpreter is a topic that has been scarcely approached by interpreting scholars. The issue obtained almost no attention from military researchers. To fill this gap, this contribution aims to identify the skills and attitudes that military institutions and peacekeepers expect of their “ideal interpreter”, using interviews with fifteen officers who worked daily with interpreters in the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Despite the limitations, both in sample size and method, results show that the ideal interpreter often possesses skills not necessarily linked to the interpreting word, like courage or the ability to act as a cultural advisor, but also that the preference of the armed forces alternates between the objective, professional interpreter, and the embedded military one. Although representing a small sample, interviewees’ perspectives and perceptions could be extended to several types of peace-support missions and crises and can also be a useful reference framework for the recruitment and training of local civilian interpreters.