{
  "id": "interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Los intérpretes — the sworn court interpreters of the Audiencias of the Indies",
  "summary": "A salaried, sworn interpreting service attached to every royal court in Spanish America: an oath to add and conceal nothing, a ban on taking so much as food from a litigant, a printed fee of one or two tomines a witness — and two rules that concede the problem, the Indian litigant's right from 1537 to bring a bilingual man of his own to check the official version, and the Indian cabildo's vote, from 1630, on who the interpreter would be. Still being commanded on the justices of Mexico in 1768.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "americas",
    "indigenous-peoples",
    "languages",
    "legal-history",
    "spanish-empire",
    "human-rights"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegios-de-caciques-del-peru"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Did indigenous litigants in colonial Spanish America have court interpreters?",
    "Who paid the interpreters of the Audiencias of the Indies?",
    "What oath did a colonial court interpreter swear?",
    "Could an Indian litigant challenge the official interpreter's version?",
    "Who chose the interpreter for an Indian town after 1630?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The office has its own título in the compiled law of the Indies — título XXVIIII of the second book, \"De los Intérpretes\", fourteen laws running from folio 477 in the 1791 impression. Ley j, of Felipe II at Aranjuez on 10 May 1583, states the reason in the crown's own words: many are the harms that can follow if the interpreters of the language of the Indians lack the fidelity, Christianity and goodness required, \"por ser el instrumento por donde se ha de hacer justicia, y los Indios son gobernados, y se enmiendan los agravios que reciben\". It orders presidents and oidores to see that interpreters have the qualities and sufficiency the work demands, to honour them as they deserve, and to punish with all rigour any offence presumed or proved against their fidelity.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "They were paid by the court, not by the litigant. A second clause of the same law, of Felipe III at Lisbon on 7 October 1619, orders their salary paid out of the gastos de Justicia y Estrados, and where there are none, from the penas de Cámara — that is, from judicial funds and fines.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Ley ij, from ordinance 297 of the Audiencias given at Monzón on 4 October 1563, requires a number of interpreters in each Audiencia and an oath before they are received: that they will use the office well and faithfully, \"declarando, é interpretando el negocio y pleyto, que les fuere cometido, clara y abiertamente, sin encubrir, ni añadir cosa alguna, diciendo simplemente el hecho, delito, ó negocio, y testigos, que se exâminaren, sin ser parciales á ninguna de las partes, ni favorecer mas á uno, que á otro\", and that they will take no interest beyond the salary taxed to them, on pain of perjury, of the damage and interest, of returning what they took with the setenas, and of loss of office.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The anti-gift rule is drawn as tightly as the one that governed judges. Ley iij forbids interpreters to receive gifts or presents from Spaniards, Indians or anyone else who has or expects suits or business with them, \"en poca, ó en mucha cantidad, aunque sean cosas de comer, ó beber, y ofrecidas, dadas, ó prometidas de su propia voluntad\", nor to ask for them through others, on pain of returning them with the setenas — and provides that this may be proved by the same means the laws allow against the judges and officers of the Audiencias.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Availability was regulated as a duty with a price. Interpreters were to attend the acuerdos, audiencias and jail visits every non-feast day and, at the least, the afternoon sessions in the house of the president and oidores, dividing the work among themselves so that no business went undecided or delayed through their absence, on pain of two pesos for the poor for each day missed plus the damage, interest and costs of the party left waiting; and on audience days one of them was to be in the offices of the escribanos at nine in the morning to take the memoria given by the fiscal and to call the witnesses to be examined, on pain of half a peso for the prisoners of the jail per day missed.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Two laws keep the interpreter from becoming the litigant's agent. Ley vj forbids him to hear Indians in his house or anywhere outside it: he must bring them without hearing them to the Audiencia, \"para que allí se vea y determine la causa, conforme á Justicia\", on pain of three pesos the first time, double the second and loss of office the third; ley vij forbids interpreters to draft petitions for Indians or to act as their procuradores or solicitadores. The rule removes one channel of corruption and, in the same stroke, forbids the one bilingual officer in the building from helping a litigant prepare his case.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The fees are printed. Out of the seat of the Audiencia an interpreter took two pesos a day of salary and aid of costs \"y no mas, y no comida, ni otra cosa, sin pagarla\", from neither party directly nor indirectly, on pain of the setenas; he could make no concerts, contracts or companies with Indians, on pain of returning what he took and perpetual deprivation of office; and for each witness examined he took two tomines where the interrogatory ran above twelve questions and one tomín where it ran to twelve or fewer, on pain of repaying it with the quatro tanto — except that in a long interrogatory and an arduous cause the oidor or judge before whom the examination was made could tax a moderate additional sum in proportion to the work and time spent.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The most revealing law is the oldest of the group on this point, and it recites the failure. Ley xij, of the Emperor and the Empress Governor at Valladolid on 12 September 1537, states that the crown is informed that the interpreters and \"Naguatlatos\" of the Audiencias and of other judges, when Indians take them to execute deeds, give their statements, make other judicial and extrajudicial acts and have their confessions taken, \"dicen algunas cosas, que no dixéron los Indios, ó las dicen y declaran de otra forma, con que muchos han perdido su justicia, y recibido grave daño\". Indians had been losing cases through their interpreters, and the law says so.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Its remedy is a right held by the litigant rather than a duty imposed on the officer: when any president, oidor or other judge sends for Indians who do not know Castilian to question them for any purpose, or when they come of their own will to ask or pursue their justice, the judges are to let and consent that they bring with them \"un Christiano amigo suyo, que esté presente, para que vea si lo que ellos dicen á lo que se les pregunta y pide, es lo mismo que declaran los Naguatlatos, é Intérpretes\" — so that the truth may better be known and the Indians be in no doubt that the interpreters left nothing of what they said undeclared.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Appointment moved to the community. Ley xiij, of Felipe IV at San Lorenzo on 16 October 1630, records that governors were naming their own servants as interpreters of the Indians and that many inconveniences followed from their not knowing the language; it therefore orders that governors, corregidores and alcaldes mayores not make the appointments alone, \"sino que preceda exâmen, voto y aprobacion de todo el Cabildo, ó Comunidad de los Indios\", that whoever has once been named may not be removed without cause, and that interpreters give residencia at the same time as the other officers of the cities and their cabildos.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The oldest law in the título is about extortion on the road. Ley xiiij, of the Emperor and the Queen Governor at Toledo on 24 August 1529, forbids any interpreter or lengua travelling through the provinces, cities and towns of the Indians — whether on business ordered by governors and justices or on his own authority — to ask or receive from the Indians, for himself, for the justices or for anyone else, \"joyas, ropas, mantenimientos, ni otras ningunas cosas\", on pain of losing his goods to the Cámara y Fisco and of banishment from the land; and it adds that the Indians are not to give more than they are obliged to give to those who hold them in encomienda.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "A second document, printed in Mexico rather than Madrid, shows the salary rule being funded on the ground. Viceroy Luis de Velasco's auto de gobierno of 19 January 1555, collected in Beleña's Recopilación sumaria of 1787 under the heading \"Quitas y Vacaciones\", cuts the pay of corregidores by making sixteen-month terms carry one year's salary, and states what the freed money is for: to pay the persons who visit the pueblos de indios that cannot meet their tribute, and \"al Escribano é Intérprete á quien S. M. tiene mandado que se les paguen sus salarios de las dichas quitas é vacaciones, y que no vayan á costa de los Indios\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-1787-indios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "Two centuries later the same rules had to be ordered again, and the order survives with the litigant's right in it. A bando of the Real Sala of Mexico of 23 February 1768, approved by royal cédula of 18 July of that year and printed in Beleña under the marginal heading \"Indios é Intérpretes\", commands all justices of the capital and of the countryside of New Spain to conform to the laws of título 29, libro 2 of the Recopilación de Indias: to appoint naguatlatos or interpreters of the Indians' own language who are examined and sworn, to record in every declaration and confession whether the interpreter is \"jurado perpetuo por nombramiento\" or named for that cause alone, and to have the appointment of the Juzgado's interpreter preceded by the calificación of the justices and cabildo where there are any.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-1787-indios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "The same 1768 article turns the 1537 permission into something a court must announce. Justices are to conform \"principalmente\" in the matter of advising Indian defendants of their liberty to place, if they wish, alongside the naguatlato named by the justice, another man who is ladino, to check whether what the official interpreter states is the same as what the defendant declares — and it adds that Indians are not to be condemned in costs, nor costs exacted of them, nor their goods embargoed, nor made to pay carcelage in any jail or Tecpan, on a penalty of two hundred pesos. The same page prints the next article of the same bando prohibiting the gatherings called jamaicas under penalties of two years' obraje for Indians and mulatos, presidio for Spaniards and the recogimiento for women: the bando that protects the Indian defendant in court is the bando that punishes his party, and both are the same policing instrument.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-1787-indios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c15",
      "text": "What the evidence is and is not. The Recopilación is a compilation of standing rules printed in Madrid, not a record of practice: it shows what the crown ordered between 1529 and 1630 and kept in force through the fourth impression of 1791, and several of its laws describe the abuse that provoked them — extortion on circuit in 1529, mistranslation costing litigants their cases in 1537, governors installing their own servants in 1630. The Mexican documents add that the salary was funded in 1555 and that the whole título still had to be commanded on the justices in 1768, which is evidence of persistence and of non-compliance at once. No Audiencia case file, salary account or visita testing whether the oath, the fee schedule or the community vote were observed was reachable for this entry, and the reader should assume the gap between rule and practice was wide.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1-colegios-e-interpretes",
        "belena-1787-indios-e-interpretes"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The usual English treatment of indigenous litigation in Spanish America mentions interpreters in passing and moves on, so the machinery is never visible. Here it is, from the printed law itself, read page by page: the oath's exact wording, the salary charged to the gastos de Justicia and the penas de Cámara, the ban on accepting food or drink from a party, the attendance duty priced at two pesos a day for the poor, the tariff of one or two tomines a witness, the bar on the interpreter drafting the petition he will translate, and the two provisions that admit the system failed — a litigant's right since 1537 to bring his own bilingual friend to check the official version, and a 1630 order giving the Indian cabildo the examination and the vote over who its interpreter would be. Two documents printed in Mexico carry it further than any survey does: the 1555 auto that funded the interpreter's salary expressly so that it should not fall on the Indians, and the 1768 bando that made the courts of New Spain tell an Indian defendant he could bring his own interpreter — and that punished, in its very next article, the gatherings his people held.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-14",
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    "name": "Los intérpretes — the sworn court interpreters of the Audiencias of the Indies",
    "description": "A salaried, sworn interpreting service attached to every royal court in Spanish America: an oath to add and conceal nothing, a ban on taking so much as food from a litigant, a printed fee of one or two tomines a witness — and two rules that concede the problem, the Indian litigant's right from 1537 to bring a bilingual man of his own to check the official version, and the Indian cabildo's vote, from 1630, on who the interpreter would be. Still being commanded on the justices of Mexico in 1768.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-14",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Primero: Libro I, título XXIII (De los Colegios y Seminarios) and Libro II, título XXVIIII (De los Intérpretes)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=P1xp68LXgw8C&pg=PA212"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Auto de gobierno of Luis de Velasco on quitas y vacaciones (Mexico, 19 January 1555) and the bando of the Real Sala of 23 February 1768 headed 'Indios é Intérpretes', in Eusebio Bentura Beleña, Recopilación sumaria de los autos acordados de la Real Audiencia de esta Nueva España",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=MzFAAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA103"
      }
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Los intérpretes — the sworn court interpreters of the Audiencias of the Indies"
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}