Abstract
Although mostly remaining invisible in written sources, interpreters were inevitable for ensuring efficient dialogue throughout the whole history, especially during the periods characterized by contacts between different languages and cultures. In 1885, the territories of today Namibia and
Tanzania became part of the German Colonial empire. Despite the unified conception based on the
Germanization of the indigenous population, there were considerable differences in the approaches to the communication in both colonies. In contrast to the multilingual Southwest region, where four main languages were spoken at the time of Germans’ arrival, in the territory of Tanganyika Swahili language has already acquired its status of lingua franca by the establishment of the German colony. The study compares approaches to the language mediation in both colonies focusing on two main areas: 1) situations requiring indirect communication and 2) the profile of colonial interpreters. The demands for interpreting services in both territories were related to the colonial language policy and therefore reflect the different distribution of communication strategies in German and local languages. The overview of interpreters’ tasks, competences and training possibilities offer an efficient comparison with the interpreting during Portuguese discoveries in Africa researched by Garry Mullender. The addressed topic was investigated from diverse sources of primary research, such as archival records found in the
National Archives of Namibia and Tanzania, historical diaries in museum libraries, and interviews with the relatives of German missionaries. Therefore, the study also opens new methodological approaches to the diachronic research in translation studies