Interpreting during the Cold War era in Turkey An exercise in gatekeeping

Abstract

This article examines the way the Cold War shaped the field of interpreting in Turkey. Turkey became part of the anti-communist bloc, and one outcome of this Turkish-American partnership was the influence that a constellation of American and Turkish organizations exerted on the nascent field of interpreting. Through open-ended interviews with selected interpreters, the article seeks to shed light on the way the Cold War impacted the practice of interpreting. By drawing on Lewin's (1947) concept of gatekeeping, it is suggested that the US-led anti-communist campaign of the Cold War affected the topics that were interpreted, the common language pairs, and interpreters' lexical choices. The Cold War, thus, became a "gate" through which the interpreted topics, languages, lexical choices, and even the interpreters - all of which were instruments of the regime - had to pass through.