Comments on: All In The Translation: Leaked Spanish Memo Does NOT Show Bush “Planned To Invade Iraq No Matter What”

By: Nikolay

Nikolay — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:02:04 +0000

I guess all the people who are trumpeting this will stop saying now that Bush lied and mislead us on the WMD issue. Wonâ€™t hold my breath, though.

This is beyond stupid. Bush didn’t lie about WMDs because there are words of Bush here to prove that he was right? That’s quite a logic.

By: Tully

Tully — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:50:58 +0000

Believing translations before they’ve been vetted is like believing Drudge Report specials before they’ve been confirmed. You’re rolling the dice.

By: Ooooops, sorry, wrong translation at Conservative Times--Republican GOP news source.

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:42:05 +0000

[...] where credit is do, Joe Gandelman made sure to point out the translation differences over at the Moderate Voice. ” All In The Translation: Leaked Spanish Memo Does NOT Show Bush â€œPlanned To Invade Iraq [...]

By: domajot

domajot — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:46:07 +0000

AW, shucks!
You mean we can’t rant about this anymore?

By: Entropy

Entropy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:51:40 +0000

Joe,

As I pointed out in the original post, the original translation didn’t say Bush would attack if Iraq complied either.

Furthermore, I don’t understand the translation problem – wouldn’t Bush’s remarks have been in English to begin with? If the original English wasn’t written down then what we’re looking at is a translation from English to Spanish and then back to English. Not surprising there will be mistakes.

By: Mr.Moderate

Mr.Moderate — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:39:37 +0000

I don’t think it was a translation issue at all. It was a misrepresentation of the original transcript in the headline. I think it is a case of misinterpretation. If anything it shows Bush having a fuller grasp of the impact his policy had but still clinging to an overly rosy perception of how well they planned for the post-Saddam period. He tells Anzar that the post-Saddam period has been fully planned. Looking at the data from that period that was clearly false. It also shows that he really believed they were going to find WMD all over the place, again because of the overly optimistic analysis they had been squeezing out of the intelligence agencies.

By: C Stanley

C Stanley — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:12:13 +0000

Kudos for posting this instead of letting the original story stand with your readers, Joe.

On the issue of translations, I’m reminded of a story a friend who’s an interpreter told me. She was telling me that even within the Spanish language there are dialectical differences that lead to problems; for example, she once was translating and the speaker used a phrase something like “taking matters into one’s own hands” and when the audience cracked up after she translated that she realized that she’d used a phrase which, to that audience, was an idiom for male masturbation LOL.