interpreter

Etymology

From Middle English interpreter, interpretour, from Latin interpretor (“to explain, expound, understand”), from interpres (“agent, translator”). Displaced native Old English wealhstod.

noun

1. A person who interprets.
   1. A person who converts spoken or signed language into a different language for the benefit of one or more others who do not understand the first language being used (especially if in real time or shortly after that person has finished communicating). (Contrasted with translator.)
      A Japanese man who is tried before a German court is assisted by an interpreter in making oral statements.
      When you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will: though you understand it not yourselves, no matter; for we must not seem to understand him, unless some one among us whom we must produce for an interpreter. c. 1602, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act IV, Scene 1
      I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter. 1880, Mark Twain, chapter 14, in A Tramp Abroad, volume 1, London: Chatto & Windus, page 115
      Once in the classroom the interpreter might inform the deaf person of various auditory information occurring in the environment such as: The teacher has a strong accent. Your hearing aid is making a noise. The fire alarm has gone off! 1991, Jerome Daniel Schein, Enid G. Wolf-Schein, University of Alberta. Western Canadian Centre for Studies in Deafness, Postsecondary Education for Deaf Students
      So began my career as our family’s official interpreter. From then on, I would fill in our blanks, our silences, stutters, whenever I could. I code switched. I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours. 2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Penguin Random House, Part 1
   2. A guide who helps people visiting an attraction such as an art exhibit, a nature reserve, etc., understand what they are seeing.
      At the historic site there are costumed interpreters demonstrating ancient crafts.
2. (figurative) Something that reveals or clarifies.
   Flowers are the interpreters of love in India, painting in the most vivid but in the softest colours speaking in the sweetest sighs: while each blossom that fades is a mournful remembrancer either of blighted hopes or departed pleasures. 1823, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Forget Me Not 1824, The Indian Orphan, page 67
   […] these thy offices, / So rarely kind, are as interpreters / Of my behind-hand slackness. c. 1610, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act V, Scene 1
   the modern drama—the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of our deep-felt dissatisfaction 1910, Emma Goldman, “The Modern Drama”, in Anarchism and Other Essays, New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, page 247
3. (computing) A program that executes another program written in a high-level language by reading the instructions in real time rather than by compiling it in advance.
   Programs written in the BASIC language are usually run through an interpreter, though some can be compiled.