Response to Commentary: Bush's translator in Romania

[McGinnis, Scott]

Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 11:28:30 -0500
From: "Bernhardt, James E" <BernhardtJE at state.gov>


Ray's e-mail is a little surprising since it seems to assume that the
American translator or interpreter must have been a native speaker of
English.  Of all places, I would think at the Heritage language list
would
be a place where speakers of all languages could be considered American
and
Americans would not be assumed to be English speakers.  My guess is that
the
translator was a native speaker of Rumanian and that while 'mistakes
were
made,' the ones mentioned so far were not substantive.  An elegant
translation would have been better, of course.

James E. Bernhardt




-----Original Message-----

From: Aldrich, Ray L Mr DCS, G-2 <mailto:Ray.Aldrich at hqda.army.mil>
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 7:40 AM



        The sound and fury!

        I would postulate, up front, that we are dealing with an
interpreter, rather than a translator.

        Seems to be a reasonable "diplomatic" policy.  It does, however,
address neither the choice of "translator" nor the quality.  It seems as
tho' we're back in the Carter era where the errors of an improperly
selected
Polish speaking native English speaking "translator" were blamed on the
"translator".  I've always maintained that the wrong person was chosen
for
the job and that the blame should have been assigned to the chooser or
to
the process.  This appears to be a repeat of the same scenario.  We're
supposed to be knowledgeable language people, how can we choose someone
to
translate into a "foreign" language?  What ever happened to the general
understanding that one translates best into one's native language?  I
will
accept the very rare exception, Nabokov comes to mind, but there are not
enough of this quality translator to deviate from the practice of
relying on
official translations only when they are performed into the
interpreter's
native language.

Ray Lane Aldrich
Language is Power
Army Foreign Language Proponency Office
phone:  (703) 695-1379, DSN 225-1379
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