Jean Herbert was a French Orientalist and one of the first generation of interpreters for the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

organization. He was a former chief interpreter of the United Nations interpretation service in New York City.

Biography

Herbert was one of the pioneer, veteran and model consecutive interpreters from the

League of Nations The League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), Paris Peace ...

and the International Labor Office. His father was an English-speaking Frenchman. He was married to an English woman, with whom he had two daughters, Janine Yates and Yvette Renoux. Herbert had worked between World War I and World War II for different international organizations. Towards 1930, he became interested in Buddhism and the Far East prompting him to travel to India, China and other Buddhist countries, leading to the authorship of many books related to the Far East such as his ''Introduction to Asia''. During World War II – in 1939 - Herbert saved 2,000 Alsatians from being shot by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in the French Midi, devoting himself to the study of sacred Hindu texts until he received a telegram from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France requesting him to go to San Francisco, California for the founding of the United Nations. From San Francisco, Herbert went to the preparatory committee of the U.N. and

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in London. From London, he went to New York to function as chief interpreter. After spending two years in New York, he then moved to Geneva, taking part in the interpreter admission board of the Sorbonne and the

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schools. He published his ''Manuel de l’interprete'' (The Interpreter’s Handbook) in 1952. He also founded and directed two collections of

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

and technical dictionaries published by

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and sponsored by the Universities of Paris, Heidelberg, Mainz, Trieste and

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. Herbert also became a vice-president – and then president – of the International Association of Conference Interpreters ( AIIC) for three years. After retiring from the United Nations in 1954, Herbert continued freelancing and traveled to the Far East,

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and the Middle East. He held the chair of Eastern Mythologies at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

, where he taught from 1954 to 1964. He wrote Shinto the Fountainhead of Japan with details from visits from 1935 to 1964 and it was published in France in 1964 and in English in 1967 Jean Herbert died in 1980 at the age of 83.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Herbert, Jean United Nations interpreters People from Paris 1897 births 1980 deaths 20th-century French translators Winners of the Prix Broquette-Gonin (literature) French officials of the United Nations

Biography

See also

References