Translating Past to Present

<p>The act of interpretation has been central to Western American history. At every historical juncture interpreters were active and present--conveying meaning between people speaking mutually unintelligible languages bartering for goods and power along borders and translating intentions from gestures acts and words. While research on interpreters within zones of cultural exchange has grown among scholars of early modern Europe and Asia the historiography of interpreters of the American West remains deficient.</p><p><em>Translating Past to Present</em> offers a new perspective on the historical significance of interpretation and translation. This collection explores how the current sparse historiography relates to a lack of transparency about interpretive acts both in historical and contemporary practices and calls attention to the subjectivity of interpretive acts and historians' role in shaping how historical messages are represented. By summoning interpreters from the margins of history <em>Translating Past to Present</em> spans broad geographies and chronologies to provide a long-overdue examination of the practices of interpretation in the American West. </p><p></p><p><strong>Andrew Offenburger</strong> is an associate professor of history at Miami University. He is the author of <em>Frontiers in the Gilded Age: Adventure Capitalism and Dispossession from Southern Africa to the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands 1880-1917</em> and editor of <em>The Aimless Life: Music Mines and Revolution from the Rocky Mountains to Mexico</em> (Bison Books 2021). <strong>Patricia Nelson Limerick</strong> is a professor of history and director of the Applied History Initiative at the University of Colorado. She is the author of <em>Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts</em> <em>The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West</em> and <em>Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West</em>.</p><p></p>