Thread by @vakibs

This blog from Politico.eu has not translated the German conversation accurately. The video is here:


The mention about India is in the context of how Europe needs to be thinking of the global interconnections and how isolationism is bad.

https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1385285258044653572

First, Merkel mentions that Europe cannot defend itself by itself,but needs the NATO. Similarly, she says, that Europe must be part of the global supply chains of production. There are problems, like with the current Covid pandemic, where supplies of pharmaceuticals have stopped.

In this context, she mentions India. She says that India became a global pharmaceutical giant, and Europe "let it be" (werden lassen) also from the European point of view, with specific commitments about supplies etc. This is not as bad as "allowed it to" in the translation.

So what should Europe do when its supplies are not met? Merkel says they should "umdenken" (think differently, look for alternatives, other arrangements etc). Ultimately, she returns to her earlier point about promoting European pharmaceutial production (at 3 min in the video).

She then says that developing countries should also be given a chance to join the international trade. It can be argued that there is a slight pejorative sense treating India as a developing country that may not be competitive. But it is not as bad as in that English translation.

The context of the discussion is about European pharma production and whether cooperation between different EU countries was a hurdle during Covid, for procuring medicines etc. Merkel was defending the global integrationist policy (unlike USA-First or UK-First export controls).

Prior, Merkel also explicitly states that it is useless if only one country (say Germany) vaccinates all citizens while other EU states remain unvaccinated, because the virus will definitely mutate and bring everybody to square 1. She also defends EU exports to Latin America etc.

Merkel's argument is a bit similar to this interview by @DrSJaishankar, India's External Affairs Minister, who defended a global cooperation for fighting Covid. There are definitely differences between India and Germany, but not as much as, say with USA.

https://twitter.com/IndoreWaleBhiya/status/1385096826639065089?s=20

Anyway, this incident shows how Indian readers getting their news about foreign countries only through English language blogs or media can be a serious problem. The same is true of *news about India* also being filtered through English before it reaches countries like Germany.

There was a lot of outrage by Indian readers on the tweet above, and on tweet below, also referring to that faulty English translation.

It might be a lot of ado about a trifle. Even this is a bit unlike Merkel, who is usually diplomatic in her speehes.

https://twitter.com/v_j_freeman/status/1385173986376654852?s=20

I hope India soon gets its act together and builds an international media presence. Foreign language media must be translated directly into Indian languages. And Indian language news from India translated into foreign languages. English is a liability as a bridge language. (End)

This is silly. No translator can translate just words. He has to translate with the context.

Even then, “lassen” in German would be “let” in English. “Allow” would be “erlauben”. That blogger wrote something quickly and that is further taken out of context by the commentariat.

https://twitter.com/macaesbruno/status/1385347507841118220

It is a strange world today, where social media becomes a phenomenon in itself. All talking past each other. Then there is the extra prickliness by the “liberal” elite who keep blocking if someone quote with retweets. So we talk over screenshots, that remove context even further.

The thing is, in that quote by Hugo Gye who popularized that blog article, hé also wondered about this word. Like Chinese Whispers, the meaning is messed up further and further in the comments that follow. 😄

One unintentional weird translation kicks off a chain of confusion.

https://twitter.com/hugogye/status/1385133551931248643

Here is another person who identified this issue yesterday.

https://twitter.com/suegrey9/status/1385144873288966144

On Germany news, Germany is apparently providing Oxygen generating plants for India's Covid hospitals.

Thank God, that not every thing is getting blocked by export controls in this Covid era. 🙂

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/oxygen-c…

There is also a point about linguistic differences in how we express a meaning “grow -> let grow”. This confusion may not have arrived if people translated the expression in their mother tongue before outraging.

@avtansa, could you please also comment about this issue?

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1385801237304594433