Was He A Greek Interpreter or a Greek Interpreter?

 Sometimes I am vexing to more people than just the good Carter, my partner of so many years.

Take tonight at our local library Sherlockian discussion group, discussing "The Greek Interpreter," for example. A lot of questions where posed and discussed. Was Mycroft involved with MI-6? When did Holmes learn about the obliquity of the ecliptic when he had earlier professed ignorance of Copernican theory? What rights did Sophy Kratides have in the Victorian age? And why is it only non-British girls seem capable of violence in these stories?

All fine questions. And then there's the question I wonder about.

Does the title of the story "The Greek Interpreter" refer to Mr. Melas being from Greece or interpreting Greek?

Everyone seemed to agree that it could mean both, but I still had to ask: Which way did Conan Doyle intend it to mean when he wrote it?

"BOTH!" came the answer from the rest of our jury-sized group.

"But when I say something, I usually mean it one way, not two ways at once," I protested.

"That might just be you." This is probably not an exact quote. It's been an hour.

"I am Greek by birth and with a Grecian name, it is with that particular tongue that I am principally associated," Mr. Melas says in the story.

But in the title, is it saying that he's Greek or that he interprets Greek language? Conan Doyle had to mean one, didn't he? Or was he consciously and purposefully letting it stand for both?

What I did not say at the meeting, as we'd already discussed the xenophobic tendencies of the stories, with the Greek girl getting her stabby revenge in the postscript, was that I was kind of wondering because if Doyle felt the need to specify that the interpreter was Greek in the title, it has a whole different feeling than if he was just a guy who spoke Greek.

Since our friend Mary had mentioned the 1955 Ronald Howard adaptation, titled "The French Interpreter" (which curiously includes the Diogenes Club while leaving out Mycroft), I thought I would check it out to see how they treated Melas's French version. In the 1955 edition, filmed in France, they made Melas into a Claude Dubec. But he, like Melas, says he is French by birth and translates his native language in Britain, even though, like Melas, he knows other languages as well. So both Dubec and Melas are interpreters even when not conversing in their native tongue, but are both placed in situations when their home language is the interpreting need.

So now I have to also wonder: Was Claude Debuc a French interpreter or a French interpreter, just like I wondered if Melas was a Greek interpreter or a Greek Interpreter?

So I shall toss this question to the internet: What does the title "The Greek Interpreter" really mean? Greek or Greek? (I shall accept that the same answer applies to the 1955 "French" adaptation, as well.)