Historical study of mediation across linguistic systems has blossomed in recent decades as part of renewed interest in cross-cultural encounters, along with new approaches to political institutions and social relations which emphasize multivalency and interpersonal interaction. Translation history has been invigorated by increasing emphasis on context as well as text. The operations and siting of multilingual encounters are taking center stage in historical studies of translation. Though mediation and multilingualism as phenomena are not limited to any particular historical period, a good deal of recent scholarship has focused on translation, translators, and sites of multilingualism during the medieval and early modern periods. As Kapil Raj has argued, “cross-cultural mediation emerged as a specialized activity in its own right” during the second millennium CE. Indeed, the increasing presence and professionalization of linguistic mediators, often working collaboratively through a range of oral and written modes, is well documented across the world from the twelfth century onwards. By the nineteenth century, exchange across transregional systems which fostered the rise of linguistic specialists had intensified exponentially. What were the contributing factors to such a long boom in cross-linguistic activities and production in diverse contexts like Black Sea merchant outposts or colonial Peru? How does a consideration of this period from the perspective of a history of translation and multilingual interactions shed new light on histories of the Renaissance, Reformations, empire, crusade, colonialism, and other characteristics of the medieval and early modern world?

Departing from these and other questions, two roundtables at the upcoming AHA meeting in San Francisco in 2024 will bring translation history scholars into conversation with each other from a range of geographic expertises and historical disciplines. Each roundtable will approach the question of translation history by emphasizing, in one session, agency and practice, and in another session, context and situation. Collectively, and in conversation with the audience, the two sessions explore the ways in which translation is a process as well as a product, and the implications for the historical study of both. By looking for connections and analogies between diverse contexts, the roundtables will explore the limits and opportunities of translation history in comparative frameworks. The organizers expect a diverse audience of historians interested in questions of language, cross-cultural interaction, and other forms of exchange from a breadth of chronological and geographical specialties and methodological approaches.