Pay, please! 600 headphones for the simultaneous translation of justice
The Nuremberg Trials were not only a building block in coming to terms with Nazi injustice, they also helped simultaneous translation achieve a breakthrough.
After the zero hour in 1945, the legal processing of Nazi rule began. IBM technicians and soldiers from the US Army's telecommunications unit in Nuremberg were commissioned to plan and set up the IBM Translator system for the Nuremberg trials. Simultaneous translation transmitted via headphones celebrated its technological breakthrough with its use in the trials against the main war criminals of the Nazi regime.
The modern conference system was a further development of the Filene-Finlay-IBM system that IBM had installed at the League of Nations in Geneva and wanted to market under the name "Hushaphone". This referred to the technical term "chuchotage", in which a conversation was simultaneously whispered into the ear of a listener in another language.
French-born Léon Dostert, who had already interpreted for German and then US troops during the First World War, played a major role in this pioneering technical achievement. During the Second World War, he was head of the Translation Office of the US armed forces in Europe. His translations of the speeches by Dwight D. Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle on the occasion of the liberation of Paris are still regarded as highlights of interpreting today. Dostert was appointed chief interpreter for the thirteen trials conducted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
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According to the London Four-Power Agreement of August 1945, the trial of the main war criminals was to be conducted in four languages: English, French, Russian and German. This requirement would not have been feasible with the consecutive translations that were customary at court hearings at the time.
First simultaneous translation at the League of Nations
In 1927, British engineer Alan Gordon-Finley and US businessman and philanthropist Edward Albert Filene installed a telephone system that enabled simultaneous multilingual translation for the League of Nations in Geneva. Filene had provided 10,000 dollars for the project, in return for which the process was to be patented. However, the clunky headphones were not particularly well received by the participants. So Finley set about the (unsuccessful) task of developing a type of earphone with his "Stethophone".
Meanwhile, Filene noted that the system had been accepted and praised by a new subordinate organization of the League of Nations, the International Labour Organization (ILO). As a result, the Filene-Finley system was also adopted by the League of Nations in 1931. It was given preference over a system from Siemens & Halske, which was used at the second World Power Conference in Berlin in 1930.
However, the two partners' attempt to win over AT&T, a telephone company, to further expand the translation system failed. Filene then turned directly to IBM President Thomas J. Watson, whom he knew from meetings at the International Chamber of Commerce. Watson, in turn, recognized that the name IBM could be marketed as a name for international understanding and so his company financed the expansion and further development of the facility in Geneva. The system was patented as the Filene-Finlay-IBM system, primarily via the switches with which delegates could switch between different channels and thus languages.
(Image: International Labour Organisation)
Internally, the system was called "Hushaphone". When the patent expired, all the names on the headsets were changed and the IBM Translator System was born. "That all Men may understand -- Each in His Own Togue -- with the International Translator System," IBM advertised its system.
Logistical challenge of procurement and installation
When Léon Dostert asked IBM to use the system for the Nuremberg trials, IBM immediately agreed to send and install the state-of-the-art system, provided the US Army covered the transportation costs. Whether the behavior of the German IBM subsidiary Dehomag, which had collaborated with the National Socialists, played a role in this promise is disputed. In any case, three large containers with many microphones and 300 headphones arrived in Nuremberg, and a further 300 headsets were brought from Switzerland. IBM technicians and US army telecommunicators installed a system that became emblematic of the Nuremberg trials.
The switches for voice dialing had to be installed next to the headphones. There were also four booths for the simultaneous interpreters. Each interpreting booth had a microphone for questions and lines to the defendants' microphones, which could be signaled via two lamps to speak more slowly or loudly or to repeat a sentence.
(Image: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the IBM Corporation)
The same connections went to the four microphones of the judges. Finally, there was a "mobile" wired microphone for the defendants' closing arguments. An IBM technician and a telecommunicator each monitored the system throughout the trials. Various videos were produced to document the use of headphones and channels and to explain the situation in the courtroom.
Hundreds of interpreters in the application process
The selection of simultaneous interpreters proved to be much more difficult. Léon Dostert and his international team tested over 800 people who had applied or - in the case of the Russian speakers - were seconded by the Soviet Union. Three groups of twelve were formed for each of the four languages. Three of each group worked in the booth with a view of the defendants, three listened in the next room and three relaxed in the building. Another group of twelve was on call and the third had a day off.
Each group included human monitors who controlled the special terms. "So that the war crimes tribunal does not fail due to speechlessness and linguistic confusion, interpreters have to ensure that the profound untranslatability of the Holocaust is not even perceived," reads an article on the history of simultaneous translation.
(Image: OMGUS Germany, gemeinfrei)
Despite all the adversities (and some criticism from the British side about American formulations), the technology and all those involved received the highest praise. The standard work on the Nuremberg trials speaks of "a kind of Pentecost miracle". All the defendants and most of the witnesses were able to speak in their mother tongue. Abraham Sutzkever, one of only two Jewish survivors who appeared in Nuremberg, had to speak Russian instead of Yiddish.
IBM was able to sell its Translator System to the United Nations, among others. An IBM system was also used at the international military tribunal in Tokyo, although consecutive translation was the preferred method due to the large number of languages involved. The central trial lasted more than twice as long as its Nuremberg counterpart with the main war criminals. Léon Dostert became the founding professor of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University, where he continued his collaboration with IBM.
In 1954, he introduced the IBM 701 computer, which ushered in the age of machine translation from Russian into English.
(mho)
