Around Kenedy, Texas in 1901, a bad interpreter led to shoot out between Karnes sheriff W. T. "Brack" Morris and tenant farmer/vaquero Gregorio Cortez who was falsely accused of stealing a horse. The shootout led to a famous statewide manhunt as Cortez elluded posses as he attempted to escape across the US/Mexico border. Even though he was eventually captured, the incident turned him into a Tejano folk hero as documented by Americo Paredes in his famous book With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero that documents ballads or corridos written about him.
Texas history is full of conflicts between different groups (Americans vs Mexicans vs Comanche vs Tejanos vs Apache etc) and you do wonder about the role of translators had in causing these conflicts. It's can be hard in pointing out where something was misunderstood or just flat out ignored by one of the parties in conflict. The Gregario Cortez incident does stand out to me as one of the bigger examples that spawned violence between Anglos and Tejanos.
"His report to Dingane was lurid, alarming and convincing. He blamed the continual unrest in amaMpondoland on the presence of missionaries, whom he had described as the entering wedge of European domination. He accused the Cape Government of a deliberate advance up the coastal strip, and announced an army was even then on it's way to attack the Zulu nation. And for all this John Cane, peacefully tending his kraal, was somehow to blame. The story was eked out to convince Dingane of it's accuracy. He called out a regiment and sent it down to wipe out Cane's kraal. The impi arrived before dawn on the eighteenth of April, and Cane fled into the bush while his kraal was burned and his cattle lifted. The other settlers fled as well; for the first time in seven years the Zulus were attacking a European and not even the Fynns waited long enough to ask questions. ... As the months passed and Jakot's invasion failed to materialize, Dingane gradually realized the truth. He sent messengers after the scattered settlers asking them to return, and Cane, whose carelessness had caused it all, took his life in his hands and visited the royal kraal. By January of 1832 the air was clear and the settlers back in place. Dingane, now well aware that Jakot was the source of the trouble, asked Cane to kill him, so Ogle, nothing loath, sought him out and shot him down. Cattle thieving had brought him to Robben's Island and launched him on his career, and cattle thieving undid him; the final straw had been added to Dingane's patience when Jakot tried to cut a few head out of the royal herd."^1
I recommend picking up the book, it unfortunately lacks footnotes and proper citation, though the rather extensive bibliography is some consolation if you wish to dig further. Morris admits in his prologue that he didn't feel fully confident in the academic rigour of his work, though I'd suggest that he underestimated himself.
Jakot's predictions and Dingane's paranoia became even more of an issue when the Boer trekkers began arriving under Piet Retief. Retief was not a terribly subtle man, and evidently thought the best way to deal with Dingane was to impress and overawe him by extolling his military successes against neighbouring tribes and firing rifles into the air while entering the royal kraal as a show of force before settling a treaty with Dingane. For his efforts he was ambushed later that night and got to watch as his hundred settlers had their heads crushed with clubs. The Zulu impis then set out to exterminate the rest of the Boers, resulting in the Weenen massacre.