A language, most will agree, is not just a static body of abstract relationships between concepts and signs, but also a manifestation, a realization, of a given culture. Within that culture, it functions as both map and city. To speak two languages, well, means being able to navigate (at least) two cultures at will. Translating or interpreting necessitates doing so at the same time. In most contexts, this ability is enviable, sought after, revered.

But in times of war, when cultures meet each other in conflict and the danger of trusting the wrong person deepens and darkens people's sense of cultural identity and identification, this ability, in higher demand than ever, can prove deadly. The intermediary is capable of the unthinkable: discoursing with the enemy without actually becoming the enemy and so they are doubly Other, inhabitants of a realm beyond the binary of the conflict, practitioners of an impossible, an untenable, third way. Instead of being viewed as symbols of the hope they embody, they are often shunned, and their disillusionment becomes the sharpest indictment of our failure to get along.

I urge all of you to read the excellent article by George Packer on Iraqi interpreters published in this week's New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer before they take it off-line.