Thread by @manyapan

The hashtag "Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Proven to Be Successful" (#中国新冠疫苗已被证明有效#) attracted 460 million clicks on Weibo this week, the news was hosted by the National Business Daily (每日经济新闻) quoting WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan. But here's the problem:

The quote by Dr. Swaminathan used in this news is the following ("some of their [vaccine] candidates have proven to be successful in clinical trials"), that was published by CGTN in the video below.

But the video published by CGTN was taken from this WHO media briefing where Dr. Swaminathan actually makes a statement on "IF some of their candidates prove to be successful." The context of the video is different than as presented (and edited) in the clip published by CGTN.

All news reports on Chinese vaccines proven to be successful at this stage lead back to this one statement, that is translated as Dr. Swaminathan confirming that some are effective ("世卫组织对中国的新冠疫苗很感兴趣，一直在密切关注，一些疫苗在现阶段临床试验中已被证明有效")

So what we have now is a trending topic viewed over 450 million times and thousands of netizens rejoicing in this "good news", all referring back to this one moment where the word "IF" has been missed / left out of translation/editing of clip.

#lostintranslation