SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the mister-translation-wants-equal-time dept.
Mark Polizzotti, author of "Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto" writes an Opinion column in The New York Times entitled Why Mistranslation Matters:
Translation is the silent waiter of linguistic performance: It often gets noticed only when it knocks over the serving cart. Sometimes these are relatively minor errors — a ham-handed rendering of an author's prose, the sort of thing a book reviewer might skewer with an acid pen.
But history is littered with more consequential mistranslations — erroneous, intentional or simply misunderstood. For a job that often involves endless hours poring over books or laptop screens, translation can prove surprisingly hazardous.
Nikita Khrushchev's infamous statement in 1956 — "We will bury you" — ushered in one of the Cold War's most dangerous phases, one rife with paranoia and conviction that both sides were out to destroy the other. But it turns out that's not what he said, not in Russian, anyway. Khrushchev's actual declaration was "We will outlast you" — prematurely boastful, perhaps, but not quite the declaration of hostilities most Americans heard, thanks to his interpreter's mistake.
The response of Kantaro Suzuki, prime minister of Japan, to an Allied ultimatum in July 1945 — just days before Hiroshima — was conveyed to Harry Truman as "silent contempt" ("mokusatsu"), when it was actually intended as "No comment. We need more time." Japan was not given any.
[...] Lately, the perils of mistranslation have taken on renewed currency. How to convey Donald Trump's free-form declarations to a global audience? The president's capricious employ of his native idiom, his fractured syntax and streaming non sequiturs are challenging enough for Anglophones, so imagine the difficulties they pose to foreigners: How, exactly, do you translate "braggadocious"?
The speed and frequency of Mr. Trump's tweets have spawned an explosion of equally fast, equally viral amateur renditions, with little thought as to how they might be interpreted worldwide. The incendiary nature of many of his statements about other political leaders only exacerbates the problem.
When words collide?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:18PM (4 children)
Polizzotti starts out brilliantly illustrating how mistranslation and misunderstanding greatly contributed to escalation of tensions which could have led to thermonuclear Armageddon, and almost did many times during The Cold War. Obvious lesson to learn is to be cautious about what you believe you know about the message sender's intent.
The concept should be: Misinterpretation could lead to unimaginable disaster, so be more careful about misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Right?
But then he mentions Trump's tweets. It's very interesting how the liberal media like to misinterpret anything Trump says, tweets, or does, always casting him in the most negative light possible, never giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Liberal media would be a bit more believable if they occasionally posted something good about Trump. Liberal media are polarizing the USA and the rest of the world.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
Trump's tweets are a classic example of an English speaker and listener who assume that, because their words come from the same dictionary, that they are, in fact, speaking the same language. They are demonstrably not speaking the same language.
The media does it intentionally, because they do not want us to critically analyze Trump's positions. If we started critically analyzing Trump's positions, we might start critically analyzing other politicians like Hillary Clinton, and we might fail to find substantial difference between the two.
(Score: 5, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:31PM
The media does it intentionally, because they do not want us to critically analyze Trump's positions.
Which position? The one he just said? Or the complete opposite, which he said yesterday?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:39PM
sullying the term "liberal". Remember the term's original meaning, they are nothing of the sort.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:51AM
But keep in mind for the examples given, that the mistranslation may have been part of the message sender's intent. Translation variations are a great way to deliver different messages to different groups while maintaining plausible deniability.