Interesting footnote from Big Pharaoh on one of the reasons ordinary Muslims in other countries often get a false impression of American attitudes toward them:
George Bush said that the US is fighting "Islamic fascism". When this term gets translated, in Arabic it will mean "el Islam el fashi", or "fascist Islam" or "Islam the fascist". A huge difference between both terms.
Don't we have public relations people in our government? What are we paying them for?
So we're fighting a world-wide ideological war and the president can't bother having a linguist or two look his speeches over. Nice. I guess I'm not surprised considering how effectively the White House manages to communicate in English.
Posted by: SeanH | September 30, 2006 at 04:05 PM
I agree that he's a poor communicator, but disseminating a good translation to compete with the tendentious ones that are bound to pop up is the State department's job.
Posted by: gail | September 30, 2006 at 05:18 PM