Maybe Trump Speak Pretty One Day

June 15, 2017

US President Donald Trump is not the most popular person in the world. He is a cherished scapegoat for media outlets, US citizens, and other world leaders. One favorite point of ridicule for people is his odd use of the English language. Trump’s take on the English tongue is so confusing that translators are left scratching their heads says The Guardian in, “Trump In Translation: President’s Mangled Language Stumps Translators.” For probably the first time in his presidency, Trump followed proper sentence structure and grammar when he withdrew the US from the Paris Accord. While the world was in an uproar about the climate change deniers, translators were happy that they could translate his words easier.

Asian translators are especially worried about what comes out of Trump’s mouths. Asian languages have different root languages than European ones; so direct translations of the colloquial expressions Trump favors are near impossible.

India problems translating Trump to Hindi:

‘Donald Trump is difficult to make sense of, even in English,’ said Anshuman Tiwari, editor of IndiaToday, a Hindi magazine. “His speech is unclear, and sometimes he contradicts himself or rambles or goes off on a tangent. Capturing all that confusion in writing, in Hindi, is not easy,’ he added. ‘To get around it, usually we avoid quoting Trump directly. We paraphrase what he has said because conveying those jumps in his speech, the way he talks, is very difficult. Instead, we summarise his ideas and convey his words in simple Hindi that will make sense to our readers.’

Indian translators also do Trump a favor by translating his words using the same level of the rhetoric of Indian politicians. It makes him sound smarter than he appears to English-speakers. Trump needs to learn to trust his speechwriters, but translators should learn they can rely on Bitext’s DLAP to supplement their work and improve local colloquialisms.

Whitney Grace, June 15, 2017

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Bitext, Government, News, Technology, Translation

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.