Western and Middle Eastern interaction relied on Italian two-stage translation until the nineteenth century
Evidence
One obviously was lanĀ guage. Nobody in the West knew any Turkish, very few knew any Arabic, and nobody in the Middle East knew English or even French, until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only European language that was known at all was Italian, the dominant Mediterranean language, which was widely used in the Ottoman lands. Most of the interpreters who served as a medium of comĀ munication between foreign diplomats and foreign merchants and local authorĀ ities did so in Italian, usually through two-stage translation. From the early nineteenth century onwards, the problem of language becomes much easier. Turks and then others, realized that they had to learn Western languages in order to communicate with the modern world, and a knowledge ļ¬rst of Italian, then of French and later of English, became very widespread in all these lands. ā Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 783
Categorization
- XREF: Supports the broader knowledge-production theme: mediation by European interpreters shaped how both sides saw each other, feeding the Said-adjacent representation cluster.
- SHARE: A Mediterranean-language historian or anyone studying pre-Orientalism contact would enjoy the Italian-lingua-franca detail.