When two cultures interact, misunderstandings are inevitable. As African Studies scholar Inge Brinkman writes, when the Kingdom of Kongo began working with European parties starting in the late fifteenth century, a very specific group of interpreters played a key role.
Brinkman writes that the first European visitors to Kongo arrived from Portugal in 1482. Within a decade, the king of Kongo was baptized as a Catholic, changing his name from Nzinga a Nkuwu to João I.
Nzinga Mbemba succeeded João I as King Afonso I with the support of Portuguese clergy. Once in office, he established a new educational system, training residents of the capital region as teachers and sending them around the country to educate children in Latin, Portuguese, and Italian as well as Catholicism. Along with preparing Kongolese young people to work with foreigners, this helped unify the nation.
At the same time, many young men from Kongo’s noble families traveled to Europe to study at Catholic-run institutions. This prepared them for work as interpreters, ambassadors, or church staff. By the late sixteenth century, the kingdom had a formal system that trained interpreters who would make themselves available to traveling missionaries and other visitors from Europe.
These “mestres” received special certificates indicating their status and were exempt from both military service and paying taxes. Initially, they were paid for their work by the crown, though Brinkman suggests that over time many of them instead came to depend on fees, such as a charge paid by parishioners for providing interpretation during a confession or baptism.
European accounts show that the foreigners weren’t just dependent on mestres for help navigating life in Kongo but also respectful of their abilities and manners. One Italian priest noted that they hailed from the “most noble and civil families in the town.”
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At the same time, the use of interpreters was a source of political leverage for Kongo’s officials. During a time of tension with Portugal and its Angola colony in the seventeenth century, the king insisted that all officials use interpreters in communications with foreigners. The mestres could help strategically contextualize the Europeans’ actions and also limit their ability to ask questions. Since interpreters were with foreigners wherever they went, they could also report back to officials when that was useful.
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Brinkman writes that they also had power on the religious side. When missionaries accused Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the leader of a syncretic Christian movement, of heresy, an interpreter within the church spoke up for her.
Eventually, the Catholic hierarchy decided that depending on Kongo interpreters was too chancy and began devoting their energies to making sure the clergy learned Kikongo. And, over time, fewer new European priests arrived in Kongo, making translation less necessary. By the nineteenth century, interpreters were no longer central in either religious or political contexts—and the growth of white supremacist ideologies and the view of Africa as a Dark Continent made it unthinkable for many Europeans to view Kongolese translators as respected colleagues.
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