Skip to main content

Global conflict, the Pope and erstaunlich

I have found the Pope's original speech (in the original german)
here
and the Vatican's translation
here

Translation is an inexact science. It is clear comparing the German to the English that the translation is not that good. (The greek gets completely lost)

I have also read the BBC's report
here
which appears to be based upon the english translation

What the original german quotation refers to is the concept of forcing religion upon people through violence as being "evil and inhuman" and that is the object for which the Pope uses the quotation.

It is clear that the translator has changed some of the key nuances which add to the difficulties. However, where he says in german that the statement by the Kaiser was "astonishing" it is translated as "startlingly brusque". Similarly the nuances are lost in reference to jihad - where the english refers to holy war and the german to "jihad, holy war so as to speak".

Much that a large number of problems arise from the misunderstanding of what jihad actually means, the failure to translate the German well into English does not help.

In a sense this dispute shows the tensions in the world. The Vatican has since 1965 seen itself as holding Muslims "in esteem". Some relatively subtle errors of presentation in German, mistranslated into English and then further misrepresented by the media have built up quite a storm.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trudiagnostic change PACE leaderboard algorithm - was in position 40, now position 44 - does it matter?

Trudiagnostic have changed the way they handle the Rejuvenation Olympics Leaderboard algorithm. The result of this initially was that I was globally no 40 and have now dropped to 44. Trudiagnostic are a US company that get samples of blood and they look at the DNA to see which parts of the DNA have methyl groups (CH3) attached to them. These modifications to DNA are called methylation markers. DunedinPACE is an algorithm which uses DNA methylation markers in white blood cells to work out how quickly or slowly someone is aging. I had three results on this. The odd thing about the results was that whilst my epigenetic age calculated from the same methylation markers was going down, the speed at which I was aging was going up. I find this somewhat counterintuitive. It is, however, I think relevant that in a global contest my approach on biochemistry which is quite different to many other people's does seem to keep up with others working in the same area. To that extent it...