I translate Dutch and Spanish articles for “Watching America” (watchingamerica.com). Dutch is quite difficult to translate, mainly because the word order is somewhat different from that in the English language, especially when it comes to the placement of the second verb (the one after the finite verb) in a clause or sentence. This verb is generally buried about a mile down the road in the sentence—and, yes, some of the Dutch sentences can be very long, and complex.
Some authors’ works can be “more complex” to translate than others. One of them is Juurd Eijsvoogel, editor at the Dutch NRC Handelsblad.
But the reason Eijsvoogel’s articles are a challenge to translate is threefold. First, he packs an awful lot of information in each phrase, sentence and paragraph. Second, his writings are very nuanced, and , third, he can take a seemingly simple act or subject and develop it into a dissertation that explores and analyzes facets and aspects that would generally escape most casual observers.
One such article appeared in the NRC Handelsblad last week. The translated title is “Getting a Grip on Chaos at the Breakfast Table.” The Obama family’s breakfast table, that is.
In it, Eijsvoogel takes the relatively innocuous subject of Obama (and his family) reading several newspapers before and during breakfast and comes up with a number of interesting consequences and observations.
He starts with “change” at the White House:
President Obama reads the newspaper every morning. More than that: after his daily fitness training, still before breakfast, he and his wife and daughters go through several newspapers.
This dramatic break with the Bush years has received less attention than the proposed closure of Guantanamo Bay or the appointment of an envoy to the Middle East.
He continues to illustrate how well such a new White House routine has been received by the print media, whose epitaph had already been written:
“But, what do you want: everyone calls everyone, years after the number has been up for the printed media, and then suddenly you hear that the most popular man in the world, the man who will save the world, can not do without a newspaper. Look, reluctant advertisers, canceling subscribers, and newspaper-shy members of the YouTube generation: Somebody in the White House loves us!”
Eijsvoogel asks: “Why should a man who is so busy, who has surrounded himself with a team of top advisers, and who receives a CIA briefing every day, find it useful, or pleasant, or both, to start his day with a newspaper?” This, even though the press itself has dropped a stitch or two (“sometimes even lets the run-up to a war go by without criticism.”) and even though the press is already beginning to “attack him…And yet, every morning he has a stack of newspapers delivered.”
He partially answers his own question as follows:
It may be a matter of habit. Or, if he is not a morning person, it may be a way to get started without having to immediately talk. But let us be clear, he could also really believe that he can get something out of it. First, an impression of how his own actions come across. But in addition to this, a picture of how the country and the world are doing, an intermediate snapshot, put together during the past 24 hours, by fallible, but generally dedicated and often well-informed editors.
And,
What Obama needs in the morning is overview, a grasp of the chaotic reality of the world that imposes itself as soon as he begins his workday in the Oval Office. And that’s exactly what the newspaper offers every day: the possibility to find out what’s going on, by leafing, reading, browsing for ten minutes, or half-an-hour or more. Not only what the top ten critical threats to the homeland are, potential wars and other disasters. But also a relaxed outline of daily life in Tehran, a view on the future of the light bulb, or a report from the city of Los Angeles, about the sports world, or Brussels–to name but a few. Everything that you may need in order to come to grips with the world and to sharpen your judgment.
To emphasize the usefulness of the press, Eijsvoogel quotes Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state under Clinton, who once said that CIA reports usually “tell me what I have read in the Financial Times a few weeks ago.” And Eijsvoogel adds: “…after 9/11, we learned that the CIA, in any case, could be jealous of every newspaper that had a well-established correspondent in Afghanistan.”
Although I am an avid blogger and user of the internet, I must agree with Eijsvoogel on the value of newspapers and on the significance and appreciation that our new President does read newspapers.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.