If language hides the truth, people are misled and harmful acts on others are easier to justify.
“To misname an object is to add to the misery of the world.”
French philosopher and author, Albert Camus, wrote this in 1944 as Europe entered the final phase of a bloody global war. He believed that clarity in language is morally important. Imprecision, lies, or euphemisms distort reality and fuel injustice or suffering.
For Camus, the words we use don’t just describe the world, they influence how we understand and act within it. So, if we call something by the wrong name, we distort reality, for example calling injustice ‘security’, oppression ‘order’, or war ‘peacekeeping’.
If language hides the truth, people are misled and harmful acts on others are easier to justify.
So, where does heritage interpretation sit in this? Interpretation starts with clarity in the form of facts (information) to reveal the meanings (understanding) behind those facts, or the story behind.
But if those facts are corrupted by the language used, they can influence our understanding of the world and how we act within it. For instance, in his work on mental frames, George Lakoff used the example of “war” (on terror) and “crime”, frames that lead to completely different outcomes (victory and justice respectively). The words we use have a powerful effect on framing our thinking, triggering a succession of thoughts and arriving at a conclusion. That conclusion might be what the originator of the information intended, or it might not. It may be morally right or deliberately morally wrong in relation to universal human values of love, justice, empathy, compassion or honesty, for instance.
Despite its best intentions, interpretation is not neutral. Interpreters are human, at least most still are in the AI revolution. They have their biases and filters (as does AI). Their role is to avoid ‘interpreganda’ yet provoke thinking, not fights.
Camus lived through WWII and saw the use of propaganda to manipulate, divide and justify death and cruelty. This has not gone away, and certain leaders are using the same methods just three generations later for obvious outcomes that we cannot pretend to ignore anymore.
If interpretation fosters multiple narratives from multiple perspectives, personal meaning-making instead of message-driven linear communication, multiple truths instead of the truth, it has an important role to ensure that people exposed to different understandings of the world from their own can consider these perspectives constructively rather than negatively. Some of these understandings might be morally reprehensible but should we suppress these views and pretend they do not exist? They are there but where is the red line? To what extent should we accommodate these contrasting perspectives and give them consideration? If we reject them, do we just fuel their fire?
Interpreters are changing from message-givers, channelling what site owners and authorities would like people to think, to become facilitators of personal understanding. This is a demanding task. It is fraught with the potential for clashes and conflict, especially in an increasingly polarised world. Heritage sites do, however, provide a transformative setting to reflect and consider what we and others think, whether it is a visit to Dachau concentration camp or to the Great Barrier Reef.
Shifting up to the meta level of universal human values is a way of reconciling those differences and finding common ground, for the common good, for our common future.
Ultimately, people decide what they believe. No one likes being told what to think. But if interpreters can offer safe opportunities in meaningful sites and places to consider our thoughts, beliefs and values then this is a positive step to foster personal growth in a world in which it is all too easy to fall prey to manipulation, whether it boils down to what coffee we buy or party we vote for.
Alexander (Sandy) Colvine is IE’s Project Manager for the EU projects EMPATHS and HI-People. This article was originally published in February 2026 on Sandy’s personal blog: https://substack.com/@sandycolvine Sandy can be contacted at: alexander.colvine@interpret-europe.net.
To cite this article: Colvine, Alexander (Sandy) (2026) “To misname an object is to add to the misery of the world”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Spring 2026, p. 5–6.
Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Spring 2026.
