Trump: translation and back-translation

Reading this interview with Trump’s French translator got me thinking about how Trump’s German translators are dealing with…um, yeah…all the things Trump’s translators have to deal with.

They may be enjoying it – someone definitely had fun writing the headline: Trump erklärt im Bild-Interview, warum er weiter Twitter verwendet: “Ich kann bing, bing, bing machen.” (Trump explains in Bild interview why he continues to use Twitter: “I can go bing, bing, bing.”)

But it must be vexing to translate his confusing, half-formed sentences punctuated by New York tag phrases (“You tell me,” “I don’t care,” “Am I right?” “Look at [whatever]”). He starts with one idea, gets bored or changes his mind, and shifts to another and maybe a third before the sentence is over. Subjects seek in vain for verbs to attach themselves to. Reading his interview transcripts is like watching 20 kids drive bumper cars.

So how do you translate statements that either don’t have a clear meaning in the first place, or have a clear meaning that is buried under a lot of fragments and verbal U-turns?

Here’s a famous quote that stays on topic but is still messy to translate. Trump’s remarks on Ghazala Khan were quoted as follows in a CNN article:

“If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me. But plenty of people have written that. She was extremely quiet. And it looked like she had nothing to say. A lot of people have said that.”

Here’s how it appeared in Der Spiegel:

Khan scheine zwar ein guter Typ zu sein, sagte er in einem Fernsehinterview. “Aber seine Frau hatte nichts zu sagen – wahrscheinlich durfte sie nichts sagen”, unterstellte er. (My back-translation: Khan seemed to be a good guy, he said in a TV interview. “But his wife had nothing to say – probably she wasn’t allowed to say anything,” he alleged.)

The substance is accurate but in addition to cuts (of fragments, repetitive phrases, and appeals to “plenty” of unidentified people), there has been some streamlining. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say,” has become “But his wife had nothing to say.”

So, sometimes words are cut out to make the statements easier to translate and cite. However, at other times Trump’s translators find themselves expanding his statements with the words they think belong there. Take the one about “Second Amendment people”:

“…nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people – maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Da kann man nichts machen, Leute. Obwohl – (es gibt da) die Leute des Zweiten Verfassungszusatzes, vielleicht gibt es doch etwas (das man tun kann). Ich weiß es nicht. (http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/24238382 ©2017)

Back-translated: Nothing you can do, folks. Although – (there are) the people of the Second Constitutional Amendment, maybe there actually is something (that can be done). I don’t know.

Mmm. It’s interesting that despite the additions – which are there to make the sentences grammatically coherent – the statement remains pretty ambiguous.

Disappointingly, “bad hombres” is usually rendered as “böse Jungs” (bad boys) or “böse Typen” (bad guys). “Wir haben eine ganze Menge sehr böser Typen in diesem Land.” (“We have a whole lot of very bad guys in this country.”

One of the most widely read Trump pieces in Germany is the lengthy, rather terrifying interview he did with one British reporter from The Times and one German reporter from Bild (it is from this interview that the memorable bing bing bing headline was drawn). The complete English-language interview is here. Below are some excerpts along with their German versions. My back-translations are in italics.

 

The first quote is total nonsense. You know how sometimes articulate people pretend not to understand poorly expressed ideas, but actually it’s not that hard to figure out what’s being said? That’s not what I’m doing here. I truly do not understand the following sentence(s?):

I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban – and you take a look at every, every year its more, more, more, you know they have the different colors – and you say, you know – what’s going on?

Aber ich habe mir gerade Afghanistan angesehen. Wenn man sich da die Taliban anschaut – das sind verschiedene Farben – dann ist das jedes, jedes Jahr mehr, mehr, mehr. Und da sagt man sich: Was ist da los?

It probably goes without saying that it’s really hard to translate things you don’t understand. But whoever did this translation managed to carry everything over very precisely, with no additions or subtractions, and it makes just as little sense in the German as it did in English.

 

Here’s one about Mosul, which you will notice underwent some modifications on its way into German:

In four months we said, “We’re getting ready”, by the time we get in, it’s been so much talk — and it’s been very hard to take — you know that, right?

Vor vier Monaten sagten wir: “Wir machen uns bereit”, und als wir dann reingingen, war bereits viel zu viel darüber geredet worden. So wurde es schwer, die Stadt einunehmen.

Four months ago we said: “We are getting ready”, and then when we went in, it had already been talked about too much. So it became difficult to take the city.

 

Here’s one where he accidentally used the wrong metaphor and the translator helped him out:

[Well, I don’t want to say what I’m gonna do with the Iran deal.] I just don’t want to play the cards.

Ich will mir nicht in die Karten gucken lassen.

I don’t want to show my hand.

 

Here’s a long one. See how many differences you can spot.

Yeah, well I would say Merkel is by far one of the most important leaders. ’Cause you look at the UK and you look at the European Union and it’s Germany. Basically a vehicle for Germany. That’s why I thought the UK was so smart in getting out and you were there and you guys wrote it — put it on the front page: “Trump said that Brexit is gonna happen”. That was when it was gonna lose easily, you know, everybody thought I was crazy. Obama said to go to the back of the line. Meaning, if it does happen — and then he had to retract — that was a bad statement to make.

Ich würde sagen, Merkel ist mit Abstand einer der wichtigsten Regierungschefs. Sehen Sie sich Großbritannien an, und sehen Sie sich die Europäische Union an, die ist Deutschland. Im Grunde genommen ist die Europäische Union ein Mittel zum Zweck für Deutschland. Deswegen fand ich, dass es so klug von Großbritannien war auszutreten. Ihr habt es geschrieben, ihr habt es auf der Titelseite gebracht: ‘Trump sagte, dass der Brexit kommen wird”. Das war, als es noch gar nicht danach aussah, wissen Sie, alle glaubten, ich sei verrückt. Obama sagte zu der Zeit, ihr Briten müsstet euch hinten in der Reihe anstellen. Damit meinte er: Falls es passiert. Und dann musste er einen Rückzieher machen. Es war schlecht, sich so zu äußern.

I would say, Merkel is by far one of the most important leaders. Look at Great Britain, and look at the European Union, that is Germany. Basically, the European Union is a means to an end for Germany. That’s why I thought it was so smart of Great Britain to leave. You wrote it, you put it on the front page: “Trump says that the Brexit will happen”. That was when it did not seem likely at all, you know, everybody thought I was crazy. Obama said at the time, you Britons would have to go to the back of the line. By which he meant: if it does happen. And then he had to make a retraction. It was bad to make that kind of statement.

The differences are minor, but you can see that the translator couldn’t resist cleaning it up a little.

I think German speakers are missing out to some extent on Trump’s rhetorical je-ne-sais-quoi. The breezy, casual New York sound that made him seem like a trustworthy, regular guy to so many voters is very difficult to carry over into another language. When I read my back-translations, I don’t hear his voice. What I hear is a fourth grader trying really hard to discuss major world issues. And on that note, the only way I can think of to end this blog post is to offer my apologies to the rest of the world.