Commentary: Bush's translator in Romania

[smcginnis at nflc.org]

From: Dumitrescu, Domnita ddumitr at exchange.calstatela.edu
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 17:15:04 -0800

I felt the need to share with you my frustration, and that of many
Romanian-Americans, who listened to the speech Bush gave in Bucharest last
Saturday, and to the monumental errors the translator made. I was indeed
puzzled, and furious, because Romania has plenty of very skilled conference
translators fluent in perfect English, but I was told that the Bush
delegation brought its own translator from the States. I don't know who he
was, but if there is any way to let somebody up there know about the kind of
job he did, please let that person know it was just terrible! My
ex-colleagues at the University of Bucharest cannot stop wondering how this
could happen and laughing at translations like: going to war "hip to hip"
instead of going "shoulder to shoulder", just because the sounds of the
English word "shoulder" are similar to the sounds of the English word "hip".
And there are many examples of impossible syntactic constructions and
undertranslations, like when Bush says that he is "honored" to be there, in
that "great" country, and the translator says that he wanted "to be there in
that country." I have a full list of things like that.

I am telling you this just because Romanian is another heritage language in
America, and it's a shame that "the most powerful country in the world"
cannot find a decent translator to do the job, just like when they did not
have Pashto translators for the documnents before 9/11.

Thanks for listening,
Domnita Dumitrescu, PhD
Professor of Spanish Linguistics
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
California State University, Los Angeles
5151 State University Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90032
Phone: 323-343-4235
Fax: 323-343-4234
E-Mail: ddumitr at exchange.calstatela.edu
Web Page: www.calstatela.edu/faculty/ddumitr


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .