18 8 / P OLYG L O T: HOW I L E A R N L A NGUAG E S
yet others in Hebrew: they didn’t understand each other and therefore didn’t convince each other, either. Interpreters played a role at the onset of trade relations between the East and the West. Foreign-trade “operators” with a knowledge of Western languages, called dragomans, appeared at the courts of sultans. Regarding the origin of dragoman, I have found two explanations. The first is that it comes from the Old Arabic tarjuman (intermediary); the second, from the Anglo-Saxon druggerman (drudge, coolie). After a whole day’s simultaneous interpreting, I always favor the latter hypothesis. In Naima’s Annals of the Turkish Empire, there is only one dragoman specifically mentioned. He spoke 14 languages. We can be proud of him: he was a Hungarian. Today it is strange to hear that the reason why the interpreter’s trade was on the rise in the Renaissance was because the dukes of Venice and Genoa didn’t understand each other. Like painters and sculptors, these ancient representatives of our trade enjoyed the favor of patrons and enhanced the splendor of their households. It was around the beginning of the 19th century when artists were liberated from their aristocratic patrons; interpreters became independent a century later. Interpreting as an occupation is the eighth sister of the septem artes liberales, the seven liberal arts. It took a great thunder to come about. Our profession gained importance when humankind, still half-blind from the terror of World War II, started to grope for the paths of coexistence. Until that time, diplomacy had been conducted solely by diplomats, who had their common language: French. It is food for thought that at the Congress of Vienna assembling after the fall of Napoleon, in 1815, it was in French that the representatives of the Holy Alliance discussed the methods of eclipsing French language and culture. In 1945, nations began to look for cooperation in so