The massive influx of the media, international organisations, NGOs and peace-keeping forces into former Yugoslavia after 1991 led to an acute shortage of interpreters, and consequently non-professionals were recruited in droves. It is unsurprising that issues such as professional methodology and ethics, and even language competence were not foremost in the demands of commissioners. Michael Cronin speaks of autonomous and heteronomous systems of interpreter recruitment :

An autonomous system is one where colonizers train their own subjects in the language or languages of the colonized. A heteronomous system involves the recruitment of local interpreters and teaching them the imperial language. (Cronin 2002: 393)

Notwithstanding the colonial context of Cronin's discussion, his distinction between two different methods of interpreter recruitment can be mapped onto the situation in former Yugoslavia. An autonomous system of recruitment was not an option for most of the organisations clamouring for staff, as very few translators who had been trained in western countries could work with Serbo-Croatian as the target language. Any conference interpreters who had received specific training were usually already employed by international organisations. In theory, untrained emigrants of Yugoslav origin could be employed in the capacity of interpreters, but the situation was complicated by issues such as lack of training and divided loyalties. Moreover, 'regime-change' may well have occurred in their region of origin after they had emigrated. This would correspond to the situation described by Cronin, whereby the interpreter is returned to his language and culture of origin, having retraced the path from his B language (possibly English) to his a language, finds that his origins have become uncertain and “the potential duplicity of interpreters” (ibid. .: 392) is signalled.

There were not any translation agencies in the former Yugoslavia, nor any training schools that provided training for interpretation into any foreign language, so the heteronomous recruitment was also problematic. The best port of call for a prospective employer who wished to find a translator or interpreter were the translators’ associations, whose members were normally qualified with a Masters degree in a foreign language. However these people had varying degrees of experience in only either technical or in literary translation, but their competence as interpreters was an unknown quantity, as some of them were merely familiar with the foreign language. Once all the translators with experience had all been recruited, the employers’ search had to be broadened to include language teachers who, at least theoretically, were proficient in the foreign language, but whose translating or interpreting competence could be limited, or even non-existent. Even after inclusion of the latter the demand for liaison interpreters was still not satisfied. An illustration of this was provided by one trained professional interpreter, who was requested by her employers to recruit scores of “assistant-interpreters”for the approximately 60,000 members of the UN peace-keeping forces (SFOR) who arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the Dayton agreement in 1995. High unemployment brought about by the civil war, and the proffered high pay rates attracted numerous candidates. But their linguistic ability was often inadequate, and their translating competence, following hasty improvised and insufficient training, was mostly acquired only after they had begun practising. As the majority of western media organisations did not have foreign correspondents in place, only those who did, i.e. the main press agencies (AFP, Associated Press, and Reuters), could rely on access to established translators. These translators, long associated with the profession, were usually bilingual, au fait with journalistic constraints, and could boast good local grounding.

Visiting journalists faced a number of problems beyond that of the recruitment of linguists, including those of mobility, personal security, and their lack of familiarity with the local situation. Once they had found someone to act as their assistant-interpreter, or ‘fixer’, they were heavily reliant on their resourcefulness and goodwill to deal with the above.

Although foreign journalists were generally well accepted in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina physical danger was never far, nor was it the only problem that they could face. Usually journalists were assigned ‘official translators, who had been chosen by the local authorities precisely because of their allegiance. In an interview for the Swiss newspaper Le Matin, the American journalist Peter Brock described this taking place in Croatia in 1991-92:

La plupart des correspondants qui arrivaient ne parlaient pas serbo-croate, (ils) ont eu tendance à compter sur les porte-parole dynamiques des gouvernements. Le ministère de l’Information de Zagreb a rapidement retenu les services de douzaines de publicistes anglophones et le gouvernement bosniaque a également loué les services de dizaines de ‘manipulateurs’ pour médias occidentaux. (Collon 1994: 43, quoting Le Matin - 17 January 1993)

[The majority of newly arrived correspondents couldn’t speak Serbo-Croatian, so tended to count on the government ‘pro-active’ spokespersons. The Ministry of Information in Zagreb recruited dozens of English-speaking publicists, and the Bosnian government also hired dozens of ‘fixers’ for western media.]. (My translation)