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A dragoman was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish, Arabic, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A dragoman had to have a knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages. The position took particular prominence in the Ottoman Empire, where demand for the mediation provided by dragomans is said to have been created by the resistance on the part of the Muslim Ottomans to learn the languages of non-Muslim nations. The office incorporated diplomatic as well as linguistic duties—namely, in the Porte's relation with Christian countries—and some dragomans thus came to play crucial roles in Ottoman politics. The profession tended to be dominated by ethnic Greeks, including the first Ottoman Grand Dragoman Panayotis Nicosias, and Alexander Mavrocordatos. But this dominance changed in 1821 with the start of the Greek insurrection and eventual independence; the last Greek grand dragoman, Stavraki Aristarchi, was charged with complicity with the rebels and executed. With unanswered correspondence accumulating, the chief naval instructor, one Ishak Efendi, took over the position and became a pioneer in translation of Western scientific literature into Turkish, a task for which he had to create an entirely new vocabulary. Following Ishak, the grand dragoman and his staff were Muslims, and the Translation Office (''Tercüme Odası'', "Translation Room", in Turkish), with its familiarity with things European, became a new major ladder to influence and power in the Tanzimat era; this knowledge largely replaced the older ladders of the army, the bureaucracy, and the religious establishment in the mid- and late-19th century. It became customary that most hospodars of the Phanariote rule (roughly 1711–1821) over the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) would previously have occupied this Ottoman office, a fact which did not prevent many of them from joining conspiracies that aimed to overthrow Turkish rule over the area. ==Etymology and variants== In Arabic and Persian the word is ترجمان (''tarjumān''), in Turkish ''tercüman''. Deriving from the Semitic quadriliteral root ''t-r-g-m'', it appears in Akkadian as "targumannu," in Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) as ''t-r-gw-m'', and in Aramaic as ''targemana''. Hebrew makes a distinction between מתרגם (''metargem'')—referring to a translator of written texts—and מתורגמן (''meturgeman'') referring to an interpreter of spoken conversation or speeches. The latter is obviously more closely related to the other languages mentioned, though both are derived from the same Semitic root. There has been speculation of a Hittite origin of the term (Salonen, p. 12; Rabin, pp. 134–136). During the Middle Ages the word entered European languages: in Middle English as ''dragman'', in Old French as ''drugeman'', in Middle Latin as ''dragumannus'', and in Middle Greek δραγομάνος. Later European variants include the German ''trutzelmann'', the French ''trucheman'' or ''truchement'' (in modern French it is ''drogman''), the Italian ''turcimanno'', and the Spanish ''trujamán'', ''trujimán'' and ''truchimán''; these variants point to a Turkish or Arabic word "turjuman", with different vocalization. ''Webster's Dictionary'' of 1828 lists ''dragoman'' as well as the variants ''drogman'' and ''truchman'' in English. Consequently, the plural, in English, is "dragomans" (not "dragomen"). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「dragoman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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