[lg policy] Translating Trump: How the president's language may pose policy problems

Thu Jan 26 16:09:25 UTC 2017

<http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/26/translating-trump-how-the-president-s-language-may-pose-policy-problems>

Translating Trump: How the president's language may pose policy problems
Robert Hackwill
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last updated: 26/01/2017

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The 45th President of the United States has already been called to account
for his mangling of the English language and observers have noted his
gadfly approach to building single ideas, and changing them mid-stream of
consciousness when he goes off-script, which is often.

In fact part of Donald Trump’s appeal, explaining many of the 58 million
votes he won, is that he speaks like part of the electorate, or at least in
a language they can understand.
But what about the rest of the world? Is Donald Trump going to find himself
crashing into a language barrier?

You may think his electoral appeal belongs firmly in a tradition of frank
or plain political speaking, an early theorist being Plutarch
<http://www.bostonleadershipbuilders.com/plutarch/moralia/how_to_tell_a_flatterer_from_a_friend.htm>
in the first century. But Plutarch said this about frankness:

“It should be combined with good manners, and there should be reason in it
to take away its excess and insanity.”

Trump’s rudeness and violent statements regarding minorities are already
well-documented and are not the focus of this article.

*A bigly problem*

The crucial aspect of the Donald Problem is technical. The president is a
nightmare to translate, and this despite him coming out of a recent
academic study <https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05739> with the language skills
of a 13-year old.

That is not the problem it at first sounds, as a majority of the population
does indeed respond to simple language that they use day-to-day. No harm in
a politician speaking the people’s language, surely?

His speech suits online translators very well. They stay close to the
original in several languages, which matches most teenagers’ speech
structures; short phrases, single words, simple narratives.

But what if what is expressed sounds like it’s coming from a teenager on a
bad day who finds grammar a bore compared to a testosterone rush? Apart
from the problem that poses for domestic and foreign reporters and
journalists imagine the international shockwaves once Donald goes on his
travels.

Here is a well-known example from back in July 2016 on the campaign trail
we copy-pasted into Google to see. Ostensibly it is about Iran and the
nuclear issue. Try it out yourself in whatever languages you master:

“Look, having *nuclear* — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and
engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very
smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if
you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I
ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people
anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative
Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start
off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this,
built a fortune —you know I have to give my like credentials all the time,
because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the *nuclear* deal,
the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not
as important as these lives are *nuclear is powerful*; my uncle explained
that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he
would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who
would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four
prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three
and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it
is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the
women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take
them about another 150 years — but *the Persians are great negotiators, the
Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just
killed us*.”

*Patter, not policy*

The words in bold are just to give an easy glimpse of the mentions nuclear
and Iran get in between rambling about his uncle, his past, how clever he
was, how much he’s criticised and something totally random about gender
politics, I think.

On-subject the translatable part is “the Iranians talked rings around us at
the negotations”.

But now imagine the more subtle arts of diplomacy getting their hands on
these words. What can be inferred? A multitude of possibilities opens up,
ranging from taking a cheap pop at the position of women in Iranian
society, to revealing a massive inferiority complex. Absurd? Of course, but
sometimes Trump’s language leaves those seeking to understand him little
choice but to draw their own conclusions.

This can be taken to its logical absurdity for laughs. One MIT whiz
programmed a twitterbot to sound just like Donald Trump, DeepDrumpf
<http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-donald-trump-talks-2016-9?r=US&IR=T>,
using artificial intelligence.

http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/26/translating-trump-how-the-president-s-language-may-pose-policy-problems

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