36.2055, Books: Interpreting at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial: Davies (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2055. Thu Jul 03 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2055, Books: Interpreting at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial: Davies (2025)

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Date: 03-Jul-2025
From: Lucy Trotter [Lucy.Trotter at bloomsbury.com]
Subject: Interpreting at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial: Davies (2025)


Title: Interpreting at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Subtitle: How is a Witness Heard?
Series Title: Bloomsbury Advances in Translation
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
           http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/interpreting-at-the-first-frankfurt-auschwitz-trial-9781350469648/

Author(s): Peter Davies

Hardback 9781350469648
Price: £95.00

Abstract:

This book explores the work of interpreters and translators at the
First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial of 22 former SS Auschwitz personnel in
the mid-1960s, when the voices of dozens of witnesses, speaking 10
different languages, had a profound impact on public understanding of
the Holocaust in Germany and beyond.
The book asks vital questions about how victims of genocide can make
their voices heard in legal systems, and the processes by which the
testimony of Holocaust survivors has entered the public record. The
author discusses interpreters' professional practice and ethical
self-understanding in the unequal linguistic and institutional
structures of the courtroom, and shows how translation and
interpreting affected the way victims' voices were heard.
The survivors came from many different national, linguistic and
cultural backgrounds, and their testimonies are often multilingual or
hybrid, providing illuminating insights into the significance of the
language(s) in which testimony is given, but presenting interpreters
with linguistic and ethical challenges.
The preserved audio recordings of courtroom testimony show that
interpreters and translators played a key role not only in attaining
justice but also in helping to shape the ways in which victim
testimony was given, heard, understood and valued within and beyond
the courtroom. The author considers how trust is established,
developed, challenged and lost, and how this affects the ability of
Auschwitz survivors to give testimony in a complex and emotionally
demanding situation. In doing so, he also explores the contribution of
interpreting and translation to the developing memory of the Holocaust
in the 1960s and to the public image of the survivor-witness.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Translation




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