Trujamán (of the Hispanic turgumán Arab), also denominated trujimán or dragoman, is a term that is used to denominate to the type of interpreter of languages in commercial transactions during, mainly, the Low Average Age, although its functions of knowledge of Different languages extend to the sixteenth century, and almost to the first half of the seventeenth century.
Trujamán functions throughout historyWe can affirm that the main function of trujamán throughout history was to make possible the communication between two individuals with different languages. Although the mistake of comparing the trujamán with a current translator or interpreter could occur, this is not really true, since the trujamán simply embraced certain fields and only engaged in interpreting and improvising (as a running act) the words of his clients, while today's interpreter covers many more fields and, as a rule, there is usually a pre-interpretation preparation process.
The term originally arises from the basic function that the Trujmanes had originally: during the thirteenth century there was a transfer of political hegemony in the Mediterranean, from the Arab kingdoms of North Africa to the Christian peoples of Western Europe ( as, for example, Spain). Here arises a need to maintain international relations between two totally different cultures, not only in matters of language. Therefore, the Trujamán figure appears, which is in charge of reformulating in a somewhat arbitrary way the statements and administrative texts between different Arab and European States and colonies.
Trujamán's work extended over the centuries to the economic and commercial sphere (as a linguistic intermediary between two individuals of different nationalities and with different languages). Limitations of trujamán
As we have already pointed out, the technical preparation of trujamán was totally limited. There existed and lived two types of interpreters: the trujamanes, chosen of arbitrary way and in charge of some limited aspects; and the translator himself, who was engaged in more theoretical and technical work and, above all, in written translation, such as literary translation.
In summary, we can say that the trujamán was in charge of what we now call translation in sight, a type of translation more improvised and realized in real time.
wiki
