The Mother of All Translation Errors

Last week, one of our translation clients asked if we did not feel threatened by automatic translation websites, which reminded me of my days at University, when our Computer Aided Translation lecturer explained that translation programmes were generally fine if you translate the same style of texts again and again and again (the most famous translation programme, Meteo, just translates weather reports). If we were ever worried, she said, as to whether computers would replace translators completely, we just had to type the phrase ‘pig pen’ into a computer and wait for the results. There is a very good reason why translation is an arts degree, as there is so much more to it than flicking through a dictionary. My interest in translation led me to read this article, from the BBC, about translated texts in North Korea, a society so closed that there are very few native speakers of English in the country to proofread the government-sanctioned English language translations of propaganda. The language used by the Pyongyang Times is, apparently representative of the language used in the street, where a Korean phrasebook for tourists contains a section of ‘useful phrases’, such as “The American Yankee is a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, and “the US imperialists are the greatest threat to humanity in the 20^th Century”

Here is a great example of different values placed on words, where in North Korea, often-used words like ‘war’ don’t even register with people, yet cause concern among their southern neighbours. The more we use a word, the less meaning it has. An example closer to our lives is the amount of sincerity (or lack of sincerity) put in the expression ‘have a nice day’, or equivalent, that servers use to indicate they have finished serving us. In business, there is the word ‘issue’ –a fantastic word which everybody understands means ‘definitely not a problem’.

The North Korean translations are a perfect example of cultural differences between languages changing the overall meaning and sentiment of the text. Aggressive language is used on an everyday basis in North Korea, which, by definition, reduces the sentiment of such language to everyday –in other words, because this kind of aggressive language is used regularly, we cannot take it to mean that somebody is actually aggressive. Another example of the cultural difference gap is in the speeches of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The West is often critical of his speeches, accusing him of ‘sabre-rattling’. However, they make the first mistake of translation in not looking at who his target audience is. Certainly, he is not making his statements for the benefit of the Western media, but rather to his own people. Regardless of his political views, the language that Mr. Ahmadinejad uses is the language of a strong, proud, belligerent tribal leader –in essence, a perfect role model for a leader in Iran. The most famous quote of Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was just before the Gulf War in 1991, when the Western press quoted him as warning people to expect ‘The Mother of all Battles’. Again, the difference a bit of context makes in translation is enormous. Firstly, the phrase ‘the mother of all x’ is an Arabic idiom, meaning that something is very large (for example, you might say you have the mother of all headaches the morning after a party). Furthermore, Hussein’s quote was in a speech warning his own troops to expect the mother of all battles, which his audience would have understood as a reference to the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636AD, which saw an Islamic Arab army conquer Persia, leading in effect to the birth of the Iraqi nation. Hussein’s statement was actually a rally cry to his own soldiers, meant to warn them that the battle that was coming would be hard, but was justified. Again, leaving politics aside (which makes the world a lot nicer!), we see what is really a good piece of speech-writing, aimed to inspire, taken out of context by the Western press and redefined as aggressive.

So when reading the Pyongyang Times, take into account that it is a translation of texts written for a different audience, and translated by non-native speakers, with old dictionaries, from a different culture, and remember that aggressive language may not be intentionally aggressive.

1,700 insults in six months is a bit strong, however, so we may assume that the South Korean president is not a favourite of the paper.