The Power of Translation
May 27th 2007 09:34
I'm no fan of Ahmadinejad but I'm also no fan of misinformation either and what a way to misinform when you take a quote made by one man, claim another man made it, then re-interpret the quote as you wish. Believe it or not I'm reffering to the one and only 'Wiped off the map' which Ahmadinejad apparently made.
Ahmadinejad is accredited with saying "I will wipe Israel off the map", the quote this came from actually the English interpretation of what he said which is:
Wow! Farsi sure has an excess of words, except the english translation is completely inaccurate here. So what did he really say? Translated word for word -
Notice how he never used map and he did not refer to Israel as Israel, in fact he mentioned the regime that should 'vanish'.
In fact if we take the quote within context,
The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise."
We find he never actually said those words, he was referring to someone else. The quote is wrongly attributed to him.
Word-for-word translation:
So where did this quote originate? Believe it or not it was the Iranian media itself sensationalizing the words of the president. Talk about propoganda, I don't think Ahmadinejad benefited at all from this twist of words, his own people hardly approve his position and the world just had that much more reason to hate him. However he never did say it like that, so of all ironies he does not deserve the criticism he's getting (though that doesn't mean theres no criticism against him).
The rest of his speach
*source
Ahmadinejad is accredited with saying "I will wipe Israel off the map", the quote this came from actually the English interpretation of what he said which is:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
Wow! Farsi sure has an excess of words, except the english translation is completely inaccurate here. So what did he really say? Translated word for word -
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
Notice how he never used map and he did not refer to Israel as Israel, in fact he mentioned the regime that should 'vanish'.
In fact if we take the quote within context,
The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise."
We find he never actually said those words, he was referring to someone else. The quote is wrongly attributed to him.
Word-for-word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
So where did this quote originate? Believe it or not it was the Iranian media itself sensationalizing the words of the president. Talk about propoganda, I don't think Ahmadinejad benefited at all from this twist of words, his own people hardly approve his position and the world just had that much more reason to hate him. However he never did say it like that, so of all ironies he does not deserve the criticism he's getting (though that doesn't mean theres no criticism against him).
The rest of his speach
*source
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