Governing by Translation: The memory of state translators in the Arabic language politics of the Spanish Habsburgs

Abstract

This article offers a history of translation in the Spanish Habsburg monarchy that focuses on the tandem of translation and state administration. This tandem contributed to a Habsburg Arabic language politics that aimed to expand, defend, and celebrate the dominions of the Spanish Hapsburgs over Arabic-speaking peoples in Iberia and North Africa. Using archival and print documents other than translations–especially those meant to promote the genealogies and collective memories of certain «translator dynasties» at the height of the seventeenth-century Spanish craze for genealogy–the Hapsburg Arabic politics is shown to be much more pervasive than the (also pervasive) direct translation of Arabic documents. Arabic translators certainly contributed to Arabic politics in the Peninsula and in the Mediterranean, but they were not the only ones who ensured that the Monarchy’s reputation could rely on ongoing dominion over Arabic-speaking peoples and control of a prestigious Arabic past.