Translation as argumentation: ethos and ethical positioning in Hoess'sCommandant of Auschwitz

This paper draws on rhetoric and discourse analysis to explore the role and position of the mediator – editor or translator – who voices the perpetrator's perspective. The process inevitably raises questions of agency and ethical responsibility, compelling mediators to disclose their own attitude and leave traces of their presence in the text. Discursive strategies allow them to inject their own voice into the text, thus producing a counterdiscourse that can oppose and even sabotage the perpetrator's discourse. I propose an analysis of the speaker's “ethos” in the mediated autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz who was sentenced to death in 1947. I will assess the importance of editorial and translational intervention as argumentation and positioning, in order to acknowledge editors and translators as ethical agents.