[antimedia] antimedia: Well wadda you know....

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Posted by antimedia:
Well wadda you know....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1150243307.shtml


   ....the [1]New York Times says Juan Cole can't translate Persian well.

     "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map
     because no such idiom exists in Persian," remarked Juan Cole, a
     Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan and critic of
     American policy who has argued that the Iranian president was
     misquoted. "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist
     state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse." Since Iran has not
     "attacked another country aggressively for over a century," he said
     in an e-mail exchange, "I smell the whiff of war propaganda."

   That's what Cole said. Here's the truth.

     But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and
     the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations
     of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on
     his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away.
     Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and
     Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who
     is bilingual, both say "wipe off" or "wipe away" is more accurate
     than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive.
     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.
     Ahmad Zeidabadi, a professor of political science in Tehran whose
     specialty is Iran-Israel relations, explained: "It seems that in
     the early days of the revolution the word 'map' was used because it
     appeared to be the best meaningful translation for what he said.
     The words 'sahneh roozgar' are metaphorical and do not refer to
     anything specific. Maybe it was interpreted as 'book of countries,'
     and the closest thing to that was a map. Since then, we have often
     heard 'Israel bayad az naghshe jographya mahv gardad' â Israel must
     be wiped off the geographical map. Hard-liners have used it in
     their speeches."

   As Omar II [2]wryly notes

     Perhaps this public display of clumsiness in Persian is part of the
     reason [3]Cole was denied that professorship at Yale.

   Yale has higher standards. They want [4]real Taliban supporters not
   professorial wannabes.

References

   1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html?ex=1307678400&en=efa2bd266224e880&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
   2. http://jarrarsupariver.blogspot.com/2006/06/haditha-zarqawi-and-anti-iraqi-media.html
   3. http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/06/juan_cole_done_.html
   4. http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/perspectives/2006/2006-03-23-column.htm