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| Lost in Translation |
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| Monday, 19 June 2006 | |
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My recent comment piece explaining how Iran's president was badly misquoted when he allegedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" has caused a welcome little storm. The phrase has been seized on by western and Israeli hawks to re-double suspicions of the Iranian government's intentions, so it is important to get the truth of what he really said. I took my translation - "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - from the indefatigable Professor Juan Cole's website where it has been for several weeks. But it seems to be mainly thanks to the Guardian giving it prominence that the New York Times, which was one of the first papers to misquote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came out on Sunday with a defensive piece attempting to justify its reporter's original "wiped off the map" translation. (By the way, for Farsi speakers the original version is available here.)
Joining the "off the map" crowd is David Aaronovitch, a columnist on the Times (of London), who attacked my analysis yesterday. I won't waste time on him since his knowledge of Farsi is as minimal as that of his Latin. The poor man thinks the plural of casus belli is casi belli, unaware that casus is fourth declension with the plural casus (long u). The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."
This, in my view, is the crucial point and I'm glad the NYT accepts that the word "map" was not used by Ahmadinejad. (By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the controversy gets the NYT wrong, claiming falsely that Ethan Bronner "concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map".) Two other well-established translation sources confirm that Ahmadinejad was referring to time, not place. The version of the October 26 2005 speech put out by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based on the Farsi text released by the official Iranian Students News Agency, says: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history." (NB: not "wiped". I accept that "eliminated" is almost the same, indeed some might argue it is more sinister than "wiped", though it is a bit more of a mouthful if you are trying to find four catchy and easily memorable words with which to incite anger against Iran.) MEMRI (its text of the speech is available here) is headed by a former Isareli military intelligence officer and has sometimes been attacked for alleged distortion of Farsi and Arabic quotations for the benefit of Israeli foreign policy. On this occasion they supported the doveish view of what Ahmadinejad said. Finally we come to the BBC monitoring service which every day puts out hundreds of highly respected English translations of broadcasts from all round the globe to their subscribers - mainly governments, intelligence services, thinktanks and other specialists. I approached them this week about the controversy and a spokesperson for the monitoring service's marketing unit, who did not want his name used, told me their original version of the Ahmadinejad quote was "eliminated from the map of the world". As a result of my inquiry and the controversy generated, they had gone back to the native Farsi-speakers who had translated the speech from a voice recording made available by Iranian TV on October 29 2005. Here is what the spokesman told me about the "off the map" section: "The monitor has checked again. It's a difficult expression to translate. They're under time pressure to produce a translation quickly and they were searching for the right phrase. With more time to reflect they would say the translation should be "eliminated from the page of history". Would the BBC put out a correction, given that the issue had become so controversial, I asked. "It would be a long time after the original version", came the reply. I interpret that as "probably not", but let's see. Finally, I approached Iradj Bagherzade, the Iranian-born founder and chairman of the renowned publishing house, IB Tauris. He thought hard about the word "roozgar". "History" was not the right word, he said, but he could not decide between several better alternatives "this day and age", "these times", "our times", "time". So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague wish for the future. A very last point. The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favour Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out. The same with regard to Israel. The Iranian president is undeniably an opponent of Zionism or, if you prefer the phrase, the Zionist regime. But so are substantial numbers of Israeli citizens, Jews as well as Arabs. The anti-Zionist and non-Zionist traditions in Israel are not insignificant. So we should not demonise Ahmadinejad on those grounds alone. Does this quibbling over phrases matter? Yes, of course. Within days of the Ahmadinejad speech the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was calling for Iran to be expelled from the United Nations. Other foreign leaders have quoted the map phrase. The United States is piling pressure on its allies to be tough with Iran. Let me give the last word to Juan Cole, with whom I began. "I am entirely aware that Ahmadinejad is hostile to Israel. The question is whether his intentions and capabilities would lead to a military attack, and whether therefore pre-emptive warfare is prescribed. I am saying no, and the boring philology is part of the reason for the no." Source: Jonathan Steele           Readers have left 4 comments.
Stuart Lionhart:
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People will soon realise, that the mainstream media is owned and run by the Zionists.
Therefore all that they spew is tainted heavily with their political and religious aims and ambitions. IE A war between Christians and Muslims. We will not let this happen, even if Blair tells his master from isreal "relations between Isreal and Britain have never been better".
(1)
2006-06-20 09:39:10
PZ:
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You don't allow linking, but the official Iranian translation actually says "wipe off the map". Even if that's not exactly what he said, it's sure how his own office translated it.
This fact is also referenced in the NYTimes article discussed on this page.
(2)
2006-06-20 13:53:45
sophie:
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hmmm...the regime occuping Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time...well, the meaning of 'wiping Israel from the map' remains the same to me. however, whether he said the former or the latter, fact is that it is anti-israelian. so what? most muslims are. Israel is illegal and everyone knows. the only reason why muslims keep their mouth shut is because the so called democratic superpowers will destroy them if they happen to say the truth about them. we are in a dillema.
if we sstand up for ourselves, well most probably get crushed. and if we dont, we see palestine vanishing away infront of our very eyes. im sure this thought makes every zionist happy. but dont get too happy guys. yesterday, today and tomorrow ull have to live in fear and sadness coz palestinians wont let u live in peace...just the way u dont let us live in peace.
(3)
2006-06-22 12:27:45
Not Blind:
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In the Name of Islam
By Hussein Solomonii At the recent Global Muslim Unity Week held in Laudium, Pretoria, the Iranian Ambassador to South Africa, His Excellency Mr Ghanezadeh, stated that the enemies of Islam do not tire of plotting and conspiring to divide Muslims. To substantiate this point, he gave the example of the United States that, according to him, is attempting to discredit Iran for its achievements in empowering its people with nuclear energyiii.The good ambassador went on to say, “It is unfortunate that some Muslims have fallen into this evil trap and have become involved in conspiring to down-grade the achievements of a fellow Muslim country. They should know that these attempts by some people to divide the Ummah are acts of Kufr and disbelief.”iv These statements by the Ambassador have, unfortunately, a long pedigree in Islamic history – where Islam is cynically manipulated to provide cover for various narrow national objectives that benefit the elite few at the expense of the many. Following the Mongol invasions of Muslim lands between 1220 and 1500, all four of the Mongol empires established converted to Islam as a means to gain legitimacy amongst the subjugated people. However, this was a sham conversion as Karen Armstrong points out; whatever their outward trappings, their main ideology remained Mongolism, which “… glorified the imperial and military might of the Mongols and dreamed of world conquest.”v Timur Lenk (1336-1405) also justified his brutal wars of conquest by seeing himself as the scourge of Allah sent to punish the enemies of Islam.vi The sultans of the Ottoman Empire, meanwhile, established an absolute monarchy on the Byzantine model, which is anathema to Islam. Under the rule of Suleiman al Qanuni (1520-66) the shariah received an exalted status, but served the interests of empire. Meanwhile the Islamic clergy or ulama became part of the ruling elite as they served as intermediaries between the native population and the Turkish governor.vii Perhaps the most cynical use of Islam comes from the merger of the conservative purist doctrine of Islam, Wahhabism, and the ambitions of the Saudi family. Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement, began preaching his doctrine in the desert of Najd in the Arabian Peninsula in the early eighteenth century. There he met Muhammed Ibn Sa’ud who was the leader of a gang of murderous thieves who preyed on pilgrims and travellers in the desert of Najd.viii A pact was then sealed between these two venerable leaders, where Ibn Sa’ud was declared political leader or Emir and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab became the religious authority or Sheikh. Abdul Hadi Palazzi has the following to say on this pact: “And what is impressive is that for the first time in the history of Islam, a Sheikh issued a religious decree, a fatwa, whereby all non-Wahhabi Muslims were openly declared apostates and idol worshippers. The new doctrine stated that only a very limited, strict group comprises the true Muslims, while all the rest of the Muslims are, to use their terminology, the people of apostasy. This gave Ibn Sa’ud the cloak of religious legitimacy he needed to persecute innocent people. His gang was no longer a mob of travelling thugs and his victims were no longer innocent people. Now Ibn Sa’ud’s goons were “fighters for jihad,” authorized to murder “unbelievers”. For the first time in history, jihad was proclaimed against Muslims…”ix It is in this same manner that Ambassador Ghanezadeh will accuse those who question Iran’s nuclear programme as being amongst the disbelievers. The simplicity of the logic of this argument is amazing. Iran is a Muslim country. Ghanezadeh implies that any Muslim who questions Iranian policy has “fallen into this evil trap” and is “conspiring to down-grade” its “achievements”. In the process all critical debate is stifled. Muslims are expected to stand together and present a united front against the enemy – in this case the United States. The great Muslim scholar Abdelwahab Meddebx has the following to say about this kind of reasoning, “Thus they invent an imaginary conspiracy attributed to the Other, in the role of the enemy. The faults of the group and the deviances of individuals are attributable to the evil doing and malevolent foreigner. Is there any better way of removing responsibility from the individual after having discharged him of guilt? The misfortune that plagues the Muslim has the West as its origin … and Israel, whose success is irritating: The counterpoint is in fact his own failure, which he cannot acknowledge.” The logic of this argument is further undermined when one examines Tehran’s foreign policy and the fact that it is quite willing to collaborate with the very same countries it labels as enemies. During the Iran-Iraq war, which started in September 1980, Israel supplied Iran with at least US $500 million worth of arms per annum for the duration of this eight-year war. Moreover, in July 1985, US President Reagan authorised Israel to sell TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran and, in January 1986, approved direct US arms sales to the Khomeini government.xi More recently, Tehran assisted the United States in organising the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan – a long-term Iranian ally –to overthrow the Taliban. Once the Taliban were ousted, Iran assisted Washington to form the interim government in Kabul.xii In the final instance, I am a Muslim proud of his faith – a faith that does not sanction blind allegiance and that does not stifle self-criticism.
(4)
2006-06-23 07:20:54
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