In the
previous post we drew on excellent research by Prof. Marcos Rodriguez-Espinosa of the
University of Malaga which restores from oblivion the role of some of the women
volunteer interpreters in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He picks out three
of them and gives interesting information about their educational backgrounds. We
summarised the career of one of them, Aileen Palmer. Her story illustrates the inspiring
influence of the Communist Party in the 1930s not only in Spain but also in
faraway Australia. (In my student days it was strong in England too.) In
conclusion, we turn to the other two.
Nan Green (1904-1984)
Nan Green was
born in an Anglican family whose middle class standards of living declined when
her father lost his job and fell ill in the early stages of the First World
War. This process of proletarianisation would be the basis of her future
left-wing sympathies, which made her join the BCP, together with her husband
George…
In February
1937, George took the decision to travel to Spain as a driver of the ambulances
in the convoy of the Spanish Medical Aid, with nurses, doctors and stretcher
bearers. Nan, who also agreed that it was the best contribution they could make
to help in the international war against fascism, followed his steps in July as
a member of the administrative personnel attached to the medical units.
Green’s first
responsibility was to be Assistant Secretary to Peter Harrison, a polyglot who
spoke five languages, in an English hospital for wounded soldiers in the
province of Cuenca, where the administrator, the surgeon, the theatre and war
nurses and ambulance drivers were initially mostly from Spain, England and New
Zealand… Much work was done in collaboration with the local women whose
experience with nurses was limited to those nuns who mainly ran Spanish hospitals
in those days… Green’s close contact with native civilians and soldiers was
probably the main reason why she decided to receive Spanish lessons during the
scarce free time her other responsibilities left her… “my first lessons in what
later became almost a second language to me and contributed to my subsequent
history…” Her growing command of Spanish was probably the reason why she was
given the responsibility of escorting an Australian lady, sent by a railway
organization which had raised a large sum of money for her trip. During the
summer of 1938, Green was engaged as secretary to Leonard Crom, Chief Medical
Officer of the 35th Division Medical Corps, where her main duties were to
translate the doctor’s dispatches into formal Spanish, to keep the divisional
medical records and to turn them into usable statistical information.
Crom was soon
replaced by a Spanish-Gibraltarian, Enrique Bassadone, a professional and
efficient doctor who did not approve of women and always addressed Green in
Spanish “in the third person” [the formal person of verbs], to which she
replied in the second [familiar] person, more usual in Republican Spain. This
gives some idea of her character.
After the Battle of the Ebro (July-November 1938) the longest and largest battle of the war, all
members of the International Brigades were ordered to withdraw from their
military and sanitary duties, Nan among them. Unfortunately her husband,
infantry sergeant George Green, died during the withdrawal. After the war, she
kept contact for many years with Aileen.
Kajsa Rothman
Kajsa Helin
Rothman (1903-1969) was born in Karlstad, Sweden. After completing school, she
moved to Paris, where she made her living as a nanny and a journalist. At
twenty-two, she toured Europe and North Africa with a competitive dance group.
Later on, she travelled to Romania, were, once again, she found a job as a
nursemaid. In 1934, she started a travel agency in Barcelona. After the Fascist
insurrection in 1936, despite her lack of medical background, she volunteered
for the Red Cross and for a Swedish charity. Later in October she joined a
Scottish Ambulance Unit in Madrid, contributed to Radio Madrid’s broadcasting
services in Swedish and sent articles on the Spanish Civil War to a liberal
Swedish newspaper... In December 1936, she approached Canadian Dr. Norman
Bethune with the purpose of interviewing him for a book she was writing about
him. A few days later, he hired her as secretary and interpreter at the
Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit, which, with the funds provided by the Canadian
Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy (CASD), he set up in a spacious apartment in
one of the most affluent districts in Madrid. It was in these premises where
Bethune’s team of doctors, nurses and technicians would work hard in the
laboratories, fresh blood storage rooms and transfusion wards with the aim of
providing blood along the front. Bethune soon figured out the relevance of
propaganda in his plans to establish a blood transfusion unit in Spain. While
Sorensen, his Canadian interpreter, did not share Bethune’s enthusiasm for such
activities, Rothman happily engaged in short-wave radio programmes in several
languages, and her close ties with influential foreign correspondents reporting
from Madrid proved to be of great value as the unit’s innovative nature and the
Spanish conflict began to be known in other countries... Rothman’s connections
in diverse departments of the Loyalist government and her capacity to
communicate in many different languages made her an essential asset in
Bethune’s pressing need to find suitable blood donors. Her detailed knowledge
of Spanish maps and her familiarity with the exact situation of strategic
country roads, bridges and crossings also turned out to be crucial to gather
information about the medical demands of the numerous mobile hospitals and the
frequent trips transfusion units had to make on powerful vehicles to distant
battlefields.
Rothman,,
maintained a difficult relationship with her colleague Sorensen, as he resented
her invading his translation duties, and also with the Spanish doctors at the
transfusion unit, who thought her love affair with Bethune interfered with
their work. Her outspoken confidence, her dubious political affiliations and
her overt sexual behaviour would make her the perfect scapegoat of the Trotskyist
spy hunt set up by communist run Servicio de Investigación Militar, the
Republic’s intelligence secret police.
Later, Rothman
joined the International Commission which helped Republican refugees to find a
new life in Mexico, where her language skills and large scale organizational
skills had made her an essential component. Rothman stayed in Mexico working as
an interpreter guide and a teacher in the city of Tequisquiapan, until her
death in Cuernavaca in 1969
The three women were drawn to the conflict and to one another by an affinity. Not the kind of affinity we see in literary translation (for that, enter affinity in the Search box on the right) but an affinity of ideology and of adventurism. In conflicts that are ideological as well as military it is unrealistic to expect interpreters to be neutral. These women were not.
None of the them had trained as an interpreter, yet they were all able to function usefully. That was because all bilinguals can translate within the limits of their other cognitive abilities, experience and education. However, the translation ability has to be triggered. For this we may adapt an old saying and say, “Necessity is the mother of interpreting.”
Sources
Marcos RodrÃguez-Espinosa, M. (2018). The Forgotten Contribution of Women Translators in International Sanitary Units and Relief Organizations During and in the Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Current Trends in Translation Teaching and Learning E, 5, 348 – 394, 2018. Available at cttl_e_2018_12.pdf. Apologies for the wrong link address in the previous post
The above is
only a selection from the wealth of information to be found in the article.
Battle of the Ebro. Wikipedia, 2022.
Norman Bethune. Wikipedia, 2022.
There are photographs of the three women on Google Images.
Coincidence
By
happy coincidence an article in today’s The Guardian (25 August) relates
something closely connected with the topic of the above. It’s “Spanish civil war book
reveals hidden history of female journalists” by Stephen Burgen. However, the book reviewed will not be publshed until the autumn.
