WBenedict Arnold was president and then governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, serving for a total of 11 years in these roles. He was born and raised in the town of Ilchester, Somerset, England, likely attending school in Limington nearby. In 1635 at age 19, he accompanied his parents, siblings, and other family members on a voyage from England to New England where they first settled in Hingham in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In less than a year, they moved to Providence Plantation at the head of the Narragansett Bay at the request of Roger Williams. In about 1638, they moved once again about five miles (8 km) south to the Pawtuxet River, settling on the north side at a place commonly called Pawtuxet. Here they had serious disputes with their neighbors, particularly Samuel Gorton, and they put themselves and their lands under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, a situation which lasted for 16 years.
WLourdes Auzmendi Aierbe is a translator, interpreter and politician. She is best known as the Basque government's Deputy Minister for Linguistic Policy.
WBak Jungyang was a Korean Joseon and Japanese-ruled Korean bureaucrat, politician, liberal and social activist. He demolished the castle of Daegueup and the Old Gyungsangdo Provincial Office, and contributed to city planning and road maintenance in Daegu. also participated in the destruction the Castle of Jinju. He was a conscientious Japanese colonial supporter with pro-Japanese group ideology as well as an advocate for civil rights.
WHenare Raumoa Te Huatahi Balneavis was a New Zealand interpreter, private secretary and public administrator of Māori descent. Through his mother Te Rina Matewai he was connected to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Ngati Kahungunu, and Ngati Rakaipaaka; through his father he was connected to Te Whakatohea iwi.
WDuarte Barbosa was a Portuguese writer and officer from Portuguese India. He was a scrivener in a factory in Cannanore, and an interpreter of the local language, Malayalam. Barbosa wrote the Book of Duarte Barbosa c. 1516, making it one of the earliest examples of Portuguese travel literature. In 1519, Barbosa embarked on the first expedition to circumnavigate the world, led by his brother-in-law Ferdinand Magellan. He died in 1521 at the Battle of Mactan on Cebu Island in the Philippines.
WConstance Alice Barnicoat was a New Zealand secretary, interpreter, mountaineer and journalist.
WFrederick William Kahapula Beckley Jr. was a Native Hawaiian politician, historian, and educator. He was the last official interpreter of the Hawaii Supreme Court during the Kingdom of Hawaii and was the first professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii.
WBenedict of Poland was a Polish Franciscan friar, traveler, explorer, and interpreter.
WBlack Beaver or Se-ket-tu-may-qua was a trapper and interpreter who worked for the American Fur Company. He served as a scout and guide as he was fluent in English, as well as several European and Native American languages. He is credited with establishing the California and Chisholm trails.
WSedat Bornovalı is an art historian (PhD), interpreter and professional tourist guide in Italian, English and Turkish.
WJames Benjamin Covey was a sailor, remembered today chiefly for his role as interpreter during the legal proceedings in the United States federal courts that followed the 1839 revolt aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. Covey, who spoke Mende and possibly other African languages as well as English, was instrumental for enabling the Mende passengers of the Amistad to communicate with the court and to defend themselves successfully against charges of mutiny and murder.
WPedro, or Pêro da Covilhã or, sometimes written: Pero de Covilhăo, was a Portuguese diplomat and explorer.
WNataliya Dmytruk is a former sign language interpreter on the Ukrainian state-run channel UT1 news broadcasts. Dmytruk became famous for refusing to translate the official script during a live broadcast on November 24, 2004 that announced Viktor Yanukovych as the winner of the presidential election. Instead of signing the official script, Dmytruk instead signed to viewers "Our president is Viktor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies." Dmytruk's act of defiance has been regarded as one of several catalysts for many Ukrainian journalists who subsequently rejected doctored news reports in favour of a more balanced reporting.
WEnrique of Malacca, was a Malay member of the Magellan–Elcano expedition that completed the first circumnavigation of the world in 1519–1522. He was acquired as a slave by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1511 at the age of 14 years, probably in the early stages of the Siege of Malacca (1511). Although Magellan's will calls him "a native of Malacca", Antonio Pigafetta states that he was a native of Sumatra. Magellan later took him to Europe, where he accompanied the circumnavigation expedition in 1519. According to many historians, there is a possibility that he is the first person to circumnavigate the globe.
WFelix Flying Hawk (1881–1944) was an Oglala Lakota Wild Wester, interpreter, photographer and rancher. Felix Flying Hawk was the only son of Chief Flying Hawk and Goes Out Looking. "The Story of Felix Flying Hawk: Rustler Victim" was published by Major Israel McCreight in 1943 about an Indian arrested for stealing his own horses and attesting to the honesty and integrity of Native Americans. Felix Flying Hawk's eldest son, David Flying Hawk, traveled with his grandfather Chief Flying Hawk as a performer with Wild West shows.
WEdmund Gasseau Choteau Le Guerrier (1840–1921), of American and Cheyenne parentage, was a survivor of the Sand Creek massacre in 1864. He was an interpreter for the U.S. government during the Indian Wars between the Cheyenne and the United States, and later became a successful rancher.
WJohn Gyles was an interpreter and soldier, most known for his account of his experiences with the Maliseet tribes at their headquarters at Meductic, on the Saint John River.
WGamal Helal is a Coptic-American interpreter and diplomat who has translated for several American presidents and Secretaries of State.
WHendrick Conrad Joannes Heusken was a Dutch-American interpreter for the first American consulate in Japan, established at Gyokusen-ji in Shimoda, Shizuoka in the late Bakumatsu period. He played an important role in the negotiations for the "Harris Treaty" which opened commercial relations between Japan and America, and his assassination caused a minor diplomatic crisis between Japan and the various Western powers.
WLina Maria Hidalgo is an American politician from the state of Texas. She is the county judge for Harris County, Texas, the third largest county in the United States. She is the first woman and the first Latina to be elected to the position of Harris County Judge, a nonjudicial position that functions as the County's Chief Executive and oversees a budget of over $4 billion.
WOn 5 December 2013, Nelson Mandela, the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, as well as the country's first black head of state, died at the age of 95 after suffering from a prolonged respiratory infection. He died at around 20:50 local time (UTC+2) at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, surrounded by his family. His death was announced by then President Jacob Zuma. Reactions from governments, international organizations, and notable individuals, gained worldwide media coverage.
WGeorge Henry Martin Johnson (Onwanonsyshon) was a member of the Wolf clan and selected as a hereditary chief of the Mohawk of the Six Nations in Canada; he also served as an official interpreter and informal diplomat between the Mohawk and Canadian governments. His home of Chiefswood, built in 1856 on the Grand River, has been designated and preserved as a National Historic Site; it is the only First Nations mansion from the pre-Canadian Confederation era.
WPei Te Hurinui Jones was a New Zealand tribal leader, interpreter, land officer, writer, translator and genealogist. Of Māori descent, he identified with the Ngati Maniapoto iwi. He was born in Harataunga, Thames/Coromandel, New Zealand, on 9 September 1898. Jones had very limited formal education and was largely self-taught. The famous Waikato Kingitanga leader, Te Puea, referred to Jones and his brother Mick as "those bloody Hurai" (Jews), as their father, Daniel Lewis, was Jewish.
WHoani Turi Te Whatahoro Jury was a New Zealand Ngāti Kahungunu scholar, recorder and interpreter. Of Māori descent, he identified with the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi. He was born in Wairarapa, New Zealand on 4 February 1841. His mother was Te Aitu-o-te-rangi Jury and his father John Milsome Jury, an Englishman.
WAdelina Kondrátieva was an Argentine-born Russian translator and Brigadista who participated in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. For her subsequent dedication to that historical period, she was elected president of the Archive, War, and Exile Association (AGE), and in 2009 she was granted a Spanish passport.
WAmina Lahbabi-Peters, née Amina Lahbabi is a Moroccan interpreter and translator, who has gone on to become a branding, marketing and Communication for Development specialist.
WAntoine Le Claire was a US Army interpreter, landowner in Scott County, Iowa, and Rock Island County, Illinois, businessman, philanthropist and principal founder of Davenport, Iowa.
WAnna Manwah Lo, is an Alliance Party politician in Northern Ireland. She was a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast South from 2007 to 2016, and has been the party's president since 2016.
WPhilip Madoc was a Welsh actor. He performed many stage, television, radio and film roles, and was recognised for having a "rich, sonorous voice" and often playing villains and officers. On television, he starred as David Lloyd George in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981) and DCI Noel Bain in the detective series A Mind to Kill (1994-2002). His guest roles included multiple appearances in the cult series The Avengers (1962–68) and Doctor Who (1968-1979), as well as playing the U-boat captain in the Dad's Army episode "The Deadly Attachment" (1973). He was also known to be an accomplished linguist.
WMagdalene of Nagasaki was a Japanese Christian born in 1611 as the daughter of a Christian couple martyred about 1620. With the arrival of the Augustinian Order, Magdalene served as an Augustinian lay sister or tertiary, interpreter and catechist for the friars Francis of Jesus Terrero and Vincent of Saint Anthony Simoens.
WYusuf Malek was an Assyrian politician, author, and Allied interpreter. He initially served with the British Army as an interpreter during the Mesopotamian campaign of the First World War. Captured by the Ottomans after the disastrous Siege of Kut, he was eventually released and found his way back into the employ of the British. After the war, he became a politician in the Kingdom of Iraq and worked to support the cause of the Assyrians both domestically and globally.
WMarina [maˈɾina] or Malintzin [maˈlintsin], more popularly known as La Malinche [la maˈlintʃe], was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a key role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519. Later, she gave birth to Cortés's first son, Martín, who is considered one of the first Mestizos.
WMikhail Vitalievich Margelov ,a Russian public figure and politician, Vice President, JSC “Transneft”, the ex-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of Russia. He has been a member of the European Democrat Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) from 2002 until 2009.
WGeneral Sir James Handyside Marshall-Cornwall KCB, CBE, DSO, MC was a 20th Century British Army soldier and military historian.
WRangiputangatahi Mawhete, born as William Arthur Moffatt and commonly known as Rangi Mawhete, was a New Zealand land agent, interpreter and politician.
WAngus William McDonald was a 19th-century American military officer and lawyer in the U.S. state of Virginia. He also served as a colonel in command of the Confederate States Army's 7th Virginia Cavalry during the American Civil War. McDonald was appointed to serve in a number of prominent political positions including a superintendent overseeing the construction of the Northwestern Turnpike and a commissioner representing Virginia in its boundary dispute with Maryland. McDonald was the grandson of Virginia military officer and frontiersman, Angus McDonald (1727–1778) and the father of United States Fish Commissioner Marshall McDonald (1835–1895).
WThomas McDonnell was a 19th-century New Zealand public servant, military leader and writer.
WPrince Michael of Kent, is a member of the British royal family, younger brother of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. He is a paternal first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, being a grandson of King George V and Queen Mary. Through his mother, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, he is also a first cousin once removed of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Michael is currently 48th in the line of succession to the British throne, but at the time of his birth was seventh in the line of succession.
WAndrei Nikolaevich Mironov, one of the last soviet political prisoners, was a human rights activist, reporter, fixer, interpreter. The Washington Post described him as "the interpreter who tried to save Russia".
WMoriyama Einosuke was a samurai during the Tokugawa shogunate, and an interpreter of Dutch and English. He studied English under Dutch merchants and Ranald MacDonald. He was called upon to assist shogunate officials during the "Manhattan Incident" of 1845, during which the American whaling ship Manhattan approached Edo to repatriate 22 castaway Japanese seamen. As Chief Dutch Interpreter, he was later one of the chief men involved in the negotiations with Commodore Perry in regard to the opening of Japan to the outside world.
WPyotr Patrushev Петр Егорович Патрушев was a Russian author who escaped the Soviet Union by swimming to Turkey across the Black Sea border in 1962.
WJeremiah “Jerry” Potts, , was an American - Canadian plainsman, buffalo hunter, horse trader, interpreter, and scout of Kainai (Blood) and Scots heritage.
WJames Otis Purdy was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, from his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and in 2013 his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.
WWilliam Phileppus Ragsdale was a lawyer, newspaper editor, and translator of the Kingdom of Hawaii and popular figure known for being luna or superintendent of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement. Elements of his life story influenced Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
WShirley Childress Saxton (c.1947–2017) was an African-American sign language instructor and interpreter. She performed with Sweet Honey in the Rock from 1980–2017.
WTye Leung Schulze became the first Chinese American woman to vote in the United States when she cast a ballot in San Francisco on May 19, 1912. She also became the first Chinese American woman to pass the civil service exams and to occupy a government job. The San Francisco Call stated that she was "the first Chinese woman in the history of the world to exercise the electoral franchise." Schulze was also the first Chinese woman hired to work at Angel Island. She is a designated Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
WJohn Leak Springston "Oo ne qua ti" ᎤᏁᏆᏘ (1844–1929), a Cherokee, is best known as an Indian activist; during his life he was a Cherokee Interpreter, Editor, Lawyer, and Keetoowah Revivalist. Springston was born in the fall of 1844 in Indian Territory near Lynch's Mill, five miles east of the present site of Spavinaw Dam in the state of Oklahoma. He was the son of Anderson Springston and Sallie Eliot, Cherokees who walked the Trail of Tears from Gunter's Landing, Alabama on the Tennessee River, some 600 miles to Indian Territory. After removal, Anderson practiced law in the Cherokee courts of the Delaware and Tahlequah Districts, and as a young boy, John received instruction in tribal law and Cherokee culture at his father’s side.
WThe brothers Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers.
WViktor Mikhaylovich Sukhodrev was a Russian English-language interpreter for high-ranking Soviet politicians including Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Alexei Kosygin.
WJohn Tanner, known also by his Ojibwe name Shaw-shaw-wa-ne-ba-se, was captured by Ojibwe Indians as a child after his family had homesteaded on the Ohio River in present-day Kentucky. He grew up with the Ojibwe nation, becoming fully acculturated and learning the Saulteaux language. He married an Indian woman, served as a guide for European fur traders, and worked as an interpreter. His story of life with the American Indians was published in 1830. Titled A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner..., it was a popular success and remains an important historical record.
WTaqulittuq was an Inuk interpreter and guide. She and her husband Ipirvik worked alongside Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall and joined him in his search for Franklin's lost expedition in the 1860s, as well as the Polaris expedition to reach the North Pole
WTamara Tchinarova Finch was a ballet dancer of Armenian, Georgian and Ukrainian descent. During the 1940s Tchinarova contributed significantly to the development of fledgling Australian dance companies, including the Kirsova Ballet and the Borovansky Ballet. After retiring from dancing, she worked as a Russian/English interpreter for touring ballet companies, including the Australian Ballet, and as a dance writer.
WTsai Ting Kan
WSviatlana Heorhiyeuna Tsikhanouskaya or Svetlana Georgiyevna Tikhanovskaya is a Belarusian human rights activist and politician who ran for the 2020 Belarusian presidential election as the main opposition candidate. She is married to activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was a candidate for the same election until his arrest on 29 May 2020; she subsequently announced her intention to run in his place.
WIsmael Urbain, also Ismayl Urbain was a French journalist and interpreter.
WVernon A. Walters was a United States Army officer and a diplomat. Most notably, he served from 1972 to 1976 as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, from 1985 to 1989 as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and from 1989 to 1991 as Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany during the decisive phase of German Reunification. Walters rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.
WConrad Weiser, born Johann Conrad Weiser, Jr., was a Pennsylvania Dutch (German) pioneer who served as an interpreter and diplomat between the Pennsylvania Colony and Native American nations. Primarily a farmer, he also worked as a tanner, and later served as a soldier and judge. He lived part of the time for six years at Ephrata Cloister, a Protestant monastic community in Lancaster County.
WSarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator.
WYun Chi-ho was an important political activist and thinker during the late 1800s and early 1900s in Joseon Korea. His penname was Jwa-ong ; his courtesy name was Sungheum (성흠;聖欽), or Sungheum (성흠;成欽). Yun was a prominent member of reformist organizations such as the Independence Club (독립협회;獨立協會), led by Seo Jae-pil, the People's Joint Association (만민공동회;萬民共同會), and the Shinminhwae (신민회;新民會). He was a strong nationalist especially in his early years; pushing for reform and modernization of the Joseon government. He also served in various government positions and was a strong supporter of Christianity in Korea.
WHiltgunt Margret Zassenhaus was a German philologist who worked as an interpreter in Hamburg, Germany during World War II, and later as a physician in the United States. She was honoured for her efforts to aid prisoners in Nazi Germany during World War II.