lrb@hpcnof.UUCP (12/13/85)
I noticed a posting by Gabor with a title making reference to Kruschev's famous "We will bury you" quote (circa 1960). SURPRISE!! He never said this. An acquaintance of mine a few years ago learned from some visiting Russian journalists that a gross error was made in translating from Russian to English: Nikita used a Russian idiom which more accurately translates into something like "we will leave you in the dust", meaning we will pass you by, we will far outstrip you - sort of like one dragster saying to another "Eat my dust!!", only at the international level. This certainly is far different that the version quoted over & over in the mass media, which implies N.K. wanted the deaths of every man, woman & child in the USA. I would like to list several more famous mis-quotes or mis-translations here and invite anyone to post any that they know of (to this basenote): -There was a famous poster of Hitler with a quote that he never said that was very popular on college dorm walls in the early 70's. The quote made reference to how "we need law & order" because society is breaking down, the young people are running wild on the campuses, etc. Given the campus unrest in the US at the time this poster came out, and that Nixon was known as the "Law & Order" candidate in the '68 Pres. campaign, this poster was trying to make a connection between Nixon & Hitler by showing a remarkable similarity in the language they used. However, I read an interesting story of a Hitler historian who failed to find the date & place the quote was made, even after much consultation with his fellow historians. Finally he went to the poster publishers and after much effort he finally traced the long chain to its source: it turned out that some obscure college professor had made it up. -Many historical translations of the names of American Indians were deliberately mis-translated in order to make the Indians look stupid. An Indian artist once told me of many examples, including Chief "Rain-in -the-Face", which really translated to "Man-with-a-face-like-a-storm", i.e. like we would describe someone as having a "stormy countenance". Or "Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses", which was really "Young-man-whose-horses -are-feared". -Those of you who were old enough to be politically aware in the late 60's may remember the uproar over Agnew's calling a Japanese-American a "Fat Jap". The truth behind the remark is this: A Japanese-American reporter (he happened to be overweight) who was one of many reporters permanently assigned to Agnew's plane, had acquired this nickname from his unfeeling colleagues. After a particularly grueling day of politicking, Agnew went back to the press compartment of his plane to visit the exhausted reporters, noticed this man dozing, and said to the others something like "So the Fat Jap is all tuckered out, huh?" Apparently none of the reporters noticed anything wrong at the time (remember this was the name they themselves had invented.) But one smart reporter later realized that this quote, if properly headlined and taken out of context, could sell many papers. (Let me note here that I do *NOT* see it as proper to call any Japanese American "jap" in *ANY* context. In fact, it really bothers me whenever I meet someone who scrupulously avoids using racist words such as "nigger" & "kike", but sees nothing racist about "jap" - an apparent holdover from WWII patriotic fervor combined with an inability to distinguish Japanese and Japanese Americans. I am simply pointing out that if Agnew's remark had been quoted in the full context, it would not have been considered newsworthy.) Please limit replies to either additional mis-quotes/mis-translations, or to corrections to my posting. Please do *NOT* send any messages along the lines of "Well, if so&so didn't actually say that, it was certainly something he was feeling, anyway, so he might as well have said that." If you want a discussion of whether Kruschev wanted to annihilate the US population or whether Nixon=Hitler or whether Agnew was a racist, start a new basenote. Larry Bruns - ihnp4!hpfcla!l_bruns or hplabs!hpcnof!lrb
lrb@hpcnof.UUCP (12/13/85)
In looking over what I just posted, I realized that I may be coming down too hard on the US press. Yes it *is* true that when they get hold of a juicy quote they *want* to believe, they will often spread it far & wide without checking up on its validity, simply because they want so badly to believe that it was actually said by that person. But in general I believe that they *do* try to check up on the accuracy of a controversial statement before publishing it. And in any case, the accuracy of our press is commendable when compared to much of the rest of the world. I close with 2 examples of other countries: -China, the country with the largest population on earth, did not announce to their people that man had landed on the moon (for quite some time). -In the fall of 1968, a young Russian sailor who was an acquaintance of my brother wrote to say that his newspaper stated that earlier in the summer NATO was poised to invade Czechoslovakia, the Czechs called on the USSR to save them from an invasion, and the Russian tanks arrived in the nick of time to rescue a grateful Czech people from the hands of the Americans & W. Germans. He wondered what my brother had read in the US papers. (FYI, my brother wrote back what *he* had read, but never got another letter from the sailor again.)