About the Book

Translating Past to Present summons interpreters from the margins of history to understand the role they have played in the history of the American West and provides a long-overdue examination of the practices of interpretation.

Book Synopsis

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.

Translating Past to Present 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, Translating Past to Present spans broad geographies and chronologies to provide a long-overdue examination of the practices of interpretation in the American West.

Review Quotes

"Translating Past to Present provides a fine model that other historians, ethnologists, and anthropologists can turn to as a reference point. From archives across North America to oral histories to family conversations, the works covered are richly researched and thoroughly documented. It will be of great use to specialists in borderlands and Latin American studies, as well as ethnohistorians. No one should be able to look at transcripts the same way after reading this book."--David C. Beyreis, author of Blood in the Borderlands: Conflict, Kinship, and the Bent Family, 1821-1920

"Brilliantly conceived. Translating Past to Present encourages a level of awareness about the work in which historians engage that will both inspire and deepen our own understanding of the perspectives we bring to our research and writing. It also alerts us--with a hearty dose of good humor and occasional irony--to just what can go wrong with the interpretive process and the complex misunderstandings to which this can give rise. One can hear the echoes of the wonderful conversations that produced this collection of essays as one reads!"--Andrea Geiger, author of Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands, 1867-1945

About the Author

Andrew Offenburger is an associate professor of history at Miami University. He is the author of Frontiers in the Gilded Age: Adventure, Capitalism, and Dispossession from Southern Africa to the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1880-1917 and editor of The Aimless Life: Music, Mines, and Revolution from the Rocky Mountains to Mexico (Bison Books, 2021). Patricia Nelson Limerick is a professor of history and director of the Applied History Initiative at the University of Colorado. She is the author of Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, and Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West.