The Status of the Translator

The status of interpreters is really interesting because something you discuss in the book is how if you were immersed in two cultures, how you were never entirely trusted by both. Can you speak a little bit about that? In order to really know a language well enough to interpret, you have to be very deeply immersed and you have to have friends. But when George Thomas Staunton arrives in China with the East India Company, he too ends up making friends with local Chinese people. And those kinds of relationships make people problematic from either side. Still to come on the History Extra podcast.