■ Translators aren’t expected to talk about the Helsinki summit.

Dems’ calls for testimony go against propriety

WASHINGTON — After a week of questions about what really went on in President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, history could use a fly on the wall.

There were two — their interpreters. And some Democrats want Trump’s to talk.

One translator’s reaction: What’s Russian for fuhgeddaboudit?

Diplomatic interpreters speak when they’re spoken at, and that’s about it. They are innermost witnesses to international history, but ultradiscreet ones, tasked with reflecting as accurately as possible and in nearly real time the words and context of conversations crossing the language barrier.

They otherwise do their best to blend into the drapes.

Diplomatic experts know of no modern precedent for making interpreters come forward. The man who translated for President Ronald Reagan in his historic first meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 — alone in the room with them and his Soviet counterpart — thinks it’s a bad idea.

“I have never heard of such a thing and am appalled,” Dimitry Zarechnak, long retired from the State Department, said of the push by Democrats to subpoena the Trump interpreter. “If that were possible, then no foreign leaders would want to meet with any of our leaders.

“It’s either just a gimmick or the animosity has gone up to such a level that they’re not thinking straight about what they’re saying.”

After days of Trump’s varied statements about the meeting, the public is no closer to knowing all the issues that Trump and Putin discussed in Helsinki.

The interpreters know, as does Putin.

It’s possible the circle is wider. It’s unclear whether either side recorded the conversation or whether detailed notes are circulating in the Kremlin or across the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said she was not aware of a recording of the meeting.

For Trump and Putin, it may be that what happened in Helsinki stays in Helsinki.