Response to Commentary: Bush's translator in Romania

[Scott McGinnis]

From: <mpetron at mail.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 5:10 PM


> Although the nuance of the idiom is lost by the mistake, does this mistake
> affect overall meaning?  Presumably if one is standing shoulder to
shoulder,
> one is also infact standing hip to hip.  However, since Romanian is not
one of
> my languages, it may indeed be a sustantive error.  As for a whole country
> laughing, well, this whole country laughs at Bush's first language
mistakes
> all the time and unfortunately his mistakes have not seemed to cost him
much
> in terms his image if one uses approval ratings as a gauge.  I sympathize
with
> you on the fact that this occurred at high levels of government, but I see
> this (as well as the Romania as a Baltic country, etc.) as one more
example of
> general U.S. arrogance.  The fact is that the U.S. government provides
> virtually no support for heritage language instruction and not a whole lot
in
> terms of "foreign" language instruction.  Furthermore, the average
monolingual
> English speaking American is very intolerant with respect non-native
speakers
> of English.  Personally, I think those battles are we need to fight.
> Maria Petron
> Graduate Student
> University of Texas at Austin
>
> Quoting "McGinnis, Scott" <smcginnis at nflc.org>:
>
> > From: Dumitrescu, Domnita [mailto:ddumitr at exchange.calstatela.edu]
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 3:20 PM
> >
> > I am sorry, but if "standind hip to hip" instead of "shoulder to
> > shoulder" with somebody is not a substantive error, then what is it? A
> > whole country is laughing and making jokes about this. Why are we
> > always
> > so tolerant of language mistakes, even at high levels of governance?
> > It's like the media that, on the occasion of the visit, wrote that
> > Romania is a Baltic country, and that its president is Constantinescu
> > (actually, this is its ex-president), not Iliescu. I am a professor,
> > and
> > I wouldn't accept such mistakes from my students, who anyways make them
> > for free. But these people are paid salaries to do their job, and to do
> > it well, so why should we be so tolerant, after all? Just because it's
> > language,and not corporate business? In other fields, mistakes are much
> > less tolerated, I suppose, becauase they cost money. Here, they cost
> > image, reputation, prestige, call it  as you like, but they are not
> > completely costless.
> > Domnita Dumitrescu