
Full text loading...
Abstract
The article presents a case of interpretation as a political activity during the Cold War. In the 1980s and 1990s, a grassroots citizen diplomacy movement was initiated by the Californian Esalen Institute, the center of the American Human Potential Movement. In and around its Soviet-American exchange program, numerous individuals, NGOs and organizations established personal relationships and professional exchange with citizens of the two super powers and travelled in both directions. Interpreters had a complex and crucial role in this exchange which was different from both the professional experience of conference and of communal interpreting.