Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/17/watch-this-italian-translator.html
…
5 Likes
That poor woman; I do not envy her job.
30 Likes
“Traduttore, traditore” is an old saw regarding the impossibility of accurately conveying all the information in a translation. Nice to see a new and accurate context for the phrase here.
13 Likes
I thought she looked familiar!
8 Likes
He said so many idiotic things, it’s hard to choose the stupidest.
This one is definitely up there:
31 Likes
37 Likes
That can’t be real, and I refuse to believe it is.
(checks the actual White House transcript)
…fuck me.
Here’s a proposal I think would be good for out country. At least one presidential debate should involve a written answer portion where the candidates are presented a question and given five minutes to compose a response. Imagine the distinction we could make as a country if, say, Trump and Warren were both asked to explain, in rough terms, who the combatants were in WWI, why they were fighting, and some of the lasting ramifications of that conflict?
Do you think anyone, including his supporters, would think that Trump would be capable of correctly identifying half the countries who fought on which side?
26 Likes
This is funny because Italy is sorta famous for their inept and corrupt governments. So you would think they would be numb to this to a degree.
Also - though I haven’t traveled a lot, I did get to go to Italy and overall it is full of some fantastic people and wondrous sites.
3 Likes
Do we have audio of this?
4 Likes
If that’s what she is actually doing, then she is doing a disservice to the listeners. That would be criminally irresponsible. The drivel from a nincompoop should be rendered exactly as drivel.
13 Likes
No. Plenty of people are reposting the video of him saying a bunch of dumb things, but haven’t found this yet. Not in the official transcript, either.
1 Like
She is translating, rather than transcribing. The problem with that is by translating garbage, her output is going to look and sound ridiculous even if it is a perfect translation…in which case, her listeners could think she is a horrible translator. @Melz2 said it best:
20 Likes
Just imagine having no choice but to listen to that blithering idiot and then having to repeat whatever stupidity he’s spewed… because that’s how you make your living.
20 Likes
Personally I would love to see Trump try to pass the tests people seeking US citizenship need to take.
I definitely agree, but I wonder if that is actually possible? From English to Italian shouldn’t be too awful given Trump’s limited vocabulary and the mostly compatible basic grammar, but I wonder if for some languages it might be hard or infeasible to translate ungrammatical drivel?
15 Likes
Probably put in the secret transcript service like the phone call to Ukraine.
1 Like
Those expressions aren’t her fault. She just has Resting This-Guy’s-An-Idiot Face.
16 Likes
I remember not long after he was elected, there were some reports covering international news professionals dealing with that exact dilemma… the way he “communicates” is so unbelievable as to force a choice between embellishing the translation enough for people to be able to make sense of it or the translator coming across as blitheringly inept. Too bad it would probably be politically risky for non-US news outlets to just include a note with every quote like, “no, really, he’s this incoherent in English, too.”
14 Likes
Somehow I had never noticed, until now, how often his facial expression is exactly that of a person straining to do a big poo
on the dignity of the United States
6 Likes
