Consider an October 2005 speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he said that Israel "should be wiped off the map." This comment provoked a lot of controversy, but here we consider the translation that American news agencies chose to retain.

According to Gelf, “academics, linguists, and pundits… have come to widely different conclusions about the bellicosity of his tone, ranging from a historical reference to an outright declaration of war.”

This is not a trivial translation challenge. From one variation to its other extreme, the public impact of the message bears heavy consequences, which should be considered in the initial translation.

The problem here is that “professional translators like those used to review the Ahmadinejad speech are far too expensive for a foreign correspondent's budget,” reports Gelf.

Most foreign correspondents use the services of local translators and amateurs, and the quality of their work varies greatly from one to the other.

"I was shocked when I first arrived in Egypt during college to intern at a major newspaper and found that the vast majority of correspondents here did not speak Arabic," said Zvika Krieger, a freelancer currently living in Cairo.

Another reporters recalls an interview with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who supplied their own translator. The translator systematically used academic and highly eloquent phrases. “Although the translator didn't change the basic meaning of the official's words, such discrepancies can shape writers' perceptions and their resultant articles,” Gelf reports.

This is something all newspapers and media must be aware of, especially as they cut costs in their foreign branches, to rely solely on the services of local reporters, sometimes amateurs. It is the media’s job to make sure that, in those situations, they have a backup to check for accuracy and make sure the meaning conveyed is exactly what was said, not what was (loosely) interpreted.

This problem can have tragic consequences when the public’s perception depends solely on the media’s depiction. Readers, and the media, must exercise critical cautiousness and stay aware of the risk of getting lost in translation.

Source: Gelf Magazine