Interpreting at Vindolanda: commercial and linguistic mediation in the Roman army.

Mairs, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9192-9031 (2012) Interpreting at Vindolanda: commercial and linguistic mediation in the Roman army. Britannia, 43. pp. 17-28. ISSN 1753-5352 doi: 10.1017/S0068113X12000219

Abstract/Summary

A fragmentary tablet from Vindolanda (Tab. Vindol. II, 213) contains an occurrence of the verb interpretari (‘interpret’, ‘explain’, ‘mediate’) in an apparently commercial context, relating to the grain supply for the Roman fort. This usage is paralleled in a text on a wooden stilus tablet from Frisia in the Netherlands. ‘Interpreters’ and their activities make rather infrequent appearances in the Latin epigraphic and documentary records. In the Danubian provinces, interpreters (interpretes) are attested as army officers and officials in the office of the provincial governor. ‘Interpreters’, in both Latin and Greek inscriptions and papyri, often, however, play more ambiguous roles, not always connected with language-mediation, but also, or instead, with mediation in commercial transactions