Not to be rhe ten millionth person to say âUSAmerican President Donald Trump Is An Incoherent Public Speaker Whose Train Of Thought Can Be Best Described As Scat Jazzâ but I just remembered that when he talks at international events it is several dozen peopleâs job to translate what heâs saying and what he intends to say to world leaders in real time
If anyone reading this isnât fluent enough in English to understand the sentences that man says, please know that he has essentially mixed a number of adjectives and topics together in a hat and is pulling them out at random like a horrible childrenâs game
International translators have had this problem for A While - if they *don't* clean up what he says to sound coherent, they look like they're doing a bad job.
Explore Trump translation challenges, tips for interpreters, and 2025 strategies for accurate political translation and Trumpslation success
There was a scandal in Poland because one translator decided to translate him accurately, tone, vocabulary level and word salad tangents and all. Polish conservatives who don't speak English and previously only heard smoothed out translations that sounded coherent and used big words were up in arms about how the translator was "inserting her political agenda", "mocking him", "exaggerating", "purposefully trying to make him look bad" and "incredibly unprofessional". I listened to the translation in question. It was literally just accurate.
5. Sensitive and Controversial Language
Trumpâs speeches occasionally contain misogynistic, sexist, or inflammatory language. Japanese interpreter Tsuruta, for example, faced challenges when translating sexualized remarks, ultimately opting for standard terminology to maintain professionalism. Similarly, Chinese translator Kumiko Torikai found certain lewd expressions ethically challenging, ultimately leading to her retirement. Navigating these situations requires skillful balancing of accuracy, professionalism, and cultural sensitivity, ensuring that the translation is appropriate without distorting the original intent.
I don't know why the authors of PoliLingua act as if Trump's verbal misogyny and racism wasn't very much part of his "original intent".
it only now dawns on me that millions of people on this planet think Trump is way smarter than he is because translators have neglected to relate his violent speech accurately out of misunderstood politeness. Make the ape sound like a ape
We had a mini-scandal in the German translation/interpretation community last year about exactly this â the interpreter for the inauguration got sick of Trump's incoherence and made a remark into his mic that was not intended to be heard (here's my post on it).
The live-TV interpreter who said "Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem ScheiĂ bleiben?!" has made a statement. I admire him hugely for not apologizing for what he said, or even technically retracting it, at any point in this statement. Instead, he takes the opportunity to make a jab at Trump's inability to put a reasonable sentence together:
Jetzt reagiert auch Dolmetscher Frank Deja, der fĂŒr den Fauxpas gesorgt hatte. "Ich war ĂŒberzeugt, ich hĂ€tte mich stumm geschaltet. Ich habe aber im Eifer des Gefechts die falsche Taste gedrĂŒckt. Wir haben als Dolmetscher sogenannte RĂ€usper-Tasten, mit denen wir uns stummschalten können. Dann geht das eben nicht ĂŒber den Sender â und meine Aussage sollte natĂŒrlich auch nicht ĂŒber den Sender gehen", erklĂ€rt er "n-tv".
Seinen Zwischenruf solle man nicht als politisches Statement deuten. "Nein, das wĂ€re ganz verfehlt. Die politischen Inhalte sind nicht das Problem", meint Deja und fĂŒgt hinzu: "Ich dolmetsche stĂ€ndig Leute, mit deren politischen Inhalten ich nicht einverstanden bin. Das Problem bei Trump war, dass er auf einmal anfing, frei zu assoziieren oder dreimal hintereinander dasselbe zu sagen. Diesen wirren GedankensprĂŒngen zu folgen, ist die Schwierigkeit beim Dolmetschen." Er erklĂ€rt: "Wenn ein Redner mit geordneten Gedanken redet, dann kann man, sobald der Satz angefangen hat, schon ungefĂ€hr erahnen, wie es weitergeht. Man kann auf dieser Welle weiter surfen. Aber bei Trump ist das unmöglich."
I didn't think I'd have the energy to make a translation, but what the heck, I guess I will.
Background for the non-Germans: a German professional interpreter was live-interpreting the TV broadcast of the Trump inauguration when he suddenly broke off in the middle of his interpreting and said loudly, "Tell me, how long do we have to watch this shit?!"
Of course they immediately cut his mic after that, but it was too late :D
Anyway here's my rough translation of the article excerpt above:
Interpreter Frank Deja, who committed this faux pas, has now made a statement. "I could have sworn I'd muted myself. However, in the heat of the moment, it appears I pressed the wrong button. We interpreters have what's known as a 'cough cut' button on the interpreter console, which we can use to briefly mute ourselves. Then, whatever we say next doesn't get broadcasted â and obviously that sentence wasn't supposed to be broadcasted," he explained to n-tv.
His exclamation is not intended to be understood as a political statement. "No, that's not it at all. The political content is not the problem," says Deja, adding, "I often interpret for people whose politics I don't agree with. The problem with Trump was that he suddenly started free-associating or saying the same thing three times in a row. Following these incoherent mental leaps is quite a challenge for an interpreter." He explains: "When a speaker presents their thoughts in an organized way, the interpreter can more or less guess where each new sentence is going as soon as it's begun. You can surf that wave. But with Trump, this is impossible."
The Gaza scams are particularly disgusting for me because these scammers basically use a huge tragedy to scam people. And real people from Gaza raising money for their families and communities are affected because they may be considered another scammers
On this day, 30 June 1960, Congo achieved independence from Belgium following decades of brutal colonial rule which killed 8-10 million people â half its population.
Belgian authorities used men for forced labour in the rubber industry, having the wives and children of workers who didn't meet their daily quotas dismembered, killed and even eaten.
Following independence, Belgium and other Western powers continued to maintain power and rob the country's rich natural resources. The first democratically elected Prime Minister, socialist Patrice Lumumba was arrested, tortured and murdered on the instructions of Belgium and the CIA, who then installed a brutal dictator.
Pictured is a Congolese man named Nsala, photographed in 1904 by Alice Harris. Cropped from this photo to the left is a hand and foot of his 5-year-old daughter. She was killed and eaten, as was his wife and son, by rubber industry guards as a punishment for Nsala not harvesting enough rubber.
This book gives a detailed history of colonialism in Congo: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/lord-leverhulme-s-ghosts-colonial-exploitation-in-the-congo-jules-marchal
here is the full photo. in my opinion it very much misses the point to crop it. we don't need to sanitise the horrors of Colonialism.
More background on the photograph, published in 1904 in "King Leopold's rule in Africa": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsala_of_Wala_in_the_Nsongo_District
Yeah, Iâm thinking of you. You scrolling Tumblr to escape your countryâs facism and cuddle in fictional characters who helped piece together your identity. You writing a novel thatâs secretly a queer metaphor. You in Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, China, Singapore, and my beautiful Vietnam. You in red states and small towns that are swallowing you whole. You stuck in Church basements drowning in positive affirmations meant to change you. You on Grindr and Pornhub trying to be a man. You in a library picking up Flamer, Drama, and Nimona for the first time. You on Queering the Map venting a heartbreak. You kneeling and praying to something you donât believe. You in the ground because the world was not kind, but you were. You in the chrysalis who deserves to emerge. You who are old and thought things would be better. You who are artists and you who are leaders and you who love and fuck and exude color and life.Â
Okay, for nine months now weâve all seen firsthand how American media lies and spreads misinformation about the situation in Palestine and whatâs really going on over there. Have you stopped yet to consider what other countries American media is lying to you about?
April 30, 2026 - Vietnamese schoolchildren celebrate the victory of Vietnam over the USA, by reenacting the moment a Viet Cong tank smashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon in 1975. [video]
Revolutionaries in Africa understood that the question of African liberation was not just a question of race, that even if they managed to get rid of the white colonialists, if they didnât rid themselves of the capitalistic economic structure, the white colonialists would simply be replaced by Black neocolonialists. There was not a single liberation movement in Africa that was not fighting for socialism. In fact, there was not a single liberation movement in the whole world that was fighting for capitalism. The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldnât working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldnât working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth, while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it.