16 January 2007

Subtle, but different

A many-months-old analysis of the unfortunate political abuse of the translation of Ahmadinejad's statement against Israel is getting passed around. What appears to be a more studied and precise translation is: The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. What gets passed around by war-mongers (pleasantly called "hawks") is: The regime occupying Jerusalem must be wiped off the map. Slightly different, huh?

(Jonathan Steele's analysis has a nice overview of the difficulties, but I would have liked to have seen the source material with transliterations. Language Log has several references to the Iranian president, but unfortunately nothing on this.)

[ posted by sstrader on 16 January 2007 at 8:34:29 AM in Language & Literature ]