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German Media: bin Laden 'Smoking Gun' Tape
Translation Inaccurate
>From Robert Lederman
1-1-2
A German TV show found that the White House's
translation of the "confession" video was not
only inaccurate, but even "manipulative". On 20
December 2001, German TV channel "Das Erste"
broadcast its analysis of the White House's
translation of the OBL video that George Bush has
called a "confession of guilt". On the show
"Monitor", two independent translators and an
expert on oriental studies found the White
House's translation not only to be inaccurate,
but "manipulative".
Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini, one of the
translators, states, "I have carefully examined
the Pentagon's translation. This translation is
very problematic. At the most important places
where it is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden,
it is not identical with the Arabic."
Whereas the White House would have us believe
that OBL admits that "We calculated in advance
the number of casualties from the enemy.",
translator Dr. Murad Alami finds that: "'In
advance' is not said. The translation is wrong.
At least when we look at the original Arabic, and
there are no misunderstandings to allow us to
read it into the original."
At another point, the White House translation
reads: "We had notification since the previous
Thursday that the event would take place that
day." Dr. Murad Alami: "'Previous' is never said.
The subsequent statement that this event would
take place on that day cannot be heard in the
original Arabic version."
The White House's version also included the
sentence "we asked each of them to go to
America", but Alami says the original formulation
is in the passive along the lines of "they were
required to go". He also say that the sentence
afterwards - "they didn't know anything about the
operation" - cannot be understood.
Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and
Arabic Studies at the Asia-Africa Institute at
the University of Hamburg sums it up: "The
American translators who listened to the tapes
and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of
things in that they wanted to hear but that
cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many
times you listen to it."
Meanwhile the US press has not picked up on this
story at all, reporting instead that a new
translation has revealed that OBL even mentions
the names of some of those involved. But the item
is all over the German press, from Germany's
Channel One ("Das Erste" - the ones who broke the
story, equivalent to NBC or the BBC) to ZDF
(Channel Two) to Der Spiegel (the equivalent of
TIME or the Economist - visit
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,174025,00.html
if you can read German). More surprisingly, as I
write the following site appears on Lycos in
German:
http://www.netzeitung.de/servlets/page?section=1109&item=172422
- but nothing under lycos.com in English.
Instead, we read in the Washington Post of
Friday, December 21, 2001 (the day after the
German TV show was broadcast) that a new
translation done in the US "also indicates bin
Laden had even more knowledge of the Sept. 11
attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon than was apparent in the original
Defense Department translation.... Although the
expanded version does not change the substance of
what was released, it provides added details and
color to what has been disclosed."
I'll say. Aren't there any reporters in the US
who speak German (or Arabic, for that matter)? An
article in USA Today of 20 December 2001 sheds
some light on why the original translation might
not be accurate: "the first translation was
rushed in 12 hours, in a room in the Pentagon".
So why didn't the new US translation find the
same discrepancies as the German translators did?
Read the article in USA Today against the grain:
"Michael, who is originally Lebanese, translated
the tape with Kassem Wahba, an Egyptian. Both men
had difficulties with the Saudi dialect bin Laden
and his guest use in the tape, Michael said." Why
can a Saudi translator not be found in a
multicultural country like the US, especially
with the close business relations between the US
and Saudi Arabia? Bush Sr. probably knows any
number of them himself.
Of course, if we ever hear about the German
analysis in the US press, the reactions will be
that some will never believe that OBL is behind
the attacks no matter what you tell them. But
actually, Americans are just as stubborn in
refusing to face facts. One moderator on Fox News
complained to his interviewee that the European
media were focusing too much on civilian
casualties in Afghanistan. (I wondered which
European languages this moderator could speak; a
few weeks later, he happened to say on his show
that he had had "three years of German". This, he
claimed, would allow him to "do the show in
German.") His interviewee responded that, yes,
the Taliban were very savvy manipulators of the
media. So there we have it: Europeans get their
information straight from the Taliban Ministry of
Propaganda.
Craig Morris is a translator living in Europe. He
can be reached at
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]@t-online.de.
The original broadcast of the German show can be
viewed in German at:
Monitor - RealVideos
http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml?id=379.
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=16389&group=webcast
http://www.rense.com/general18/inac.htm
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