четверг, 29 января 2009 г.

Lost in translation: Putin’s ‘slapdown’ comment


Several media outlets have misquoted Vladimir Putin’s words which he said during the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Prime Minister allegedly referred to those of ‘limited mental capacity’.

The quote in question was Putin’s answer to Michael Dell, after the IT mogul asked how his company and other players in the industry can help Russia cope with the global financial crisis.

Some media quoted Putin’s answer as “We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity.” Fortune called the reply ‘a slapdown’ aggravated by Putin’s description of Russian scientific traditions in mathematics, which, according to the magazine, implied any old fool can build a PC outfit. The Inquirer’s report on the episode is headed “Russia tells Dell where to stick his computers”.

Oh, my! Big bad bully Putin insults a man who has just praised his country for no reason! Or did he?

No, he didn’t. The quote was taken from the live translation of the event in Davos, and the interpreter was apparently a bit baffled by prime minister’s metaphorical language, which led to confusion.

Putin’s actual words were: “You know, the trick is we’re not someone in need of help. We’re not invalids. Help is something that you should give to poor people, to people with limited capacities, to pensioners, to developing countries…”

He added: “As for Russia and our partners in Europe, in the United States, in some Asian countries, there should be a partnership of equals.”

Hardly anyone will take a request for partnership as an insult, unless he feels superior in the first place. Or is it that stereotypes are getting in the way and making some people jump to conclusions?

Source:Russia Today

7 комментариев:

Chernevog комментирует...

Sometimes it is a bit more than mistranslation. There is still a good bit of the cold war mentality in existence and still a lot of the "Western world Good" "Russia Bad" thinking that still goes on.

I am exposed to it often. I would have thought it would have gone away after a few decades, but it still rears its head from time to time as Russia asserts itself in its own right again.

The idea that a Russian leader might choose to do things in the interests of Russia and the Russian people is something many choose not to consider. For themselves it is okay,when their leaders look after their nations interests, but when it comes to applying the same idea to Russia, a lot of other nations seem to have a problem.

There is a still a lot of blaming Russia for the world's ills because of the cold war as well.

Mostly the result of a lot of mythology and lack of direct contact with Russian themselves.

I get to hear a lot of it from people who are otherwise extremely well educated (for here anyway).

I simply do not understand it, but there is a lot I dont understand.

lastochka комментирует...

You are absolutely right.The echo of the cold war is very strong. The USSR doesn't exist for decades already , but the old political game still goes on.
A lot of people prefer to belive to the "fast-food media" than to make a try to find the truth. The West is looking at his own reflection in the glass, bewitched by it's own image ,it's a kind of narcissism.
Propaganda creates an image of enemy like a "stimul" to manipulate the people.
They just don't know that their main enemy is their own mispersuasion about the World.

Chernevog комментирует...

I was just speaking to my nephew who is getting married to a German girl who was born in the GDR, and we were discussing how when he was young, no one here was taught anything about what was then "Eastern Europe" and the Warwaw pact nations.

My nephew is a very bright young man,really by intelligence he has been rated as a genius but because of some of the history he was taught, he was worried about moving there for some reasons that have absolutely no reality today and to be honest, didnt have any back then.

I have not seen him for many years but because we were rather close when he was a child and he knows I know a little about history, he called my mother to find out where I had moved and got my number, and we talked about this for a few hours.

But it was a reminder of how much the cold war is still alive because it was more a state of mind than anything else.

It probably will be until the generations that lived through it and had a part in creating it are gone.

I simply advised him that people are pretty much people everywhere, and a lot of the sort of things that we were taught over those years were more political fairy tales than real.

Alizo Writero комментирует...

My personal interpretation of the title is that it refers to participants in the Romantic movement, or Romanticism, Übersetzungsbüro Essen

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