Response to Commentary: Bush's translator in Romania

[McGinnis, Scott]

From: Aldrich, Ray L Mr DCS, G-2 [mailto:Ray.Aldrich at hqda.army.mil] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 11:14 AM
 
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED 
        The good James E. Bernhardt is correct, I was making an
assumption.  I'm ashamed.  Let us get out of the assumption business and
discover the facts.
        Mr. Bernhard, as an interested person with a "state.gov" e-mail
address and a history of being able to contact the folks at Language
Services, I would ask that you report the facts of this case.
        I don't think the name of the "translator" involved is
appropriate, but it would be useful for all of us involved with Heritage
Languages to understand the facts of this situation.  Please investigate
this situation on behalf of all of us and let us discuss the "facts".
        
        Thanks for your help and involvement.  Lane 
Ray Lane Aldrich 
Language is Power 
Army Foreign Language Proponency Office 
phone:  (703) 695-1379, DSN 225-1379 
! ! NEW ! ! 
 
-----Original Message----- 
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 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/heritage/attachments/20021204/0196526a/attachment.htm>