Responsibility and Accountability: Military Interpreters and the Chinese Kuomintang Government

This chapter addresses the little known history of the KMT’s training and use of interpreters. Reviewing the KMT’s changing demands of interpreters in the war—Chinese/German interpreters in the early 1930s, Chinese/Russian interpreters in the late 1930s, and Chinese/English interpreters in the early 1940s—it argues that the field of interpreting was directly affected by the KMT’s foreign policy and political strategies. Focusing on the KMT’s recruitment, training, and deployment of Chinese/English interpreters during its military collaboration with the USA, it discusses how the standards for ‘good interpreting’ and ‘loyal, honorable interpreters’ were established, reinforced, and embodied as part of the interpreters’ professional habitus. It concludes with a case study to explore a special group of these interpreters—university students.