HOW KING ABDULLAH OUTWITTED BARBARA WALTERS
Harold's List
The King's English
by Joseph Braude
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 10.17.05
Barbara Walters met her match last week in the Saudi port city of Jeddah. The veteran ABC journalist was in town to conduct King Abdullah's first television interview with an American audience since he assumed the throne in August. (The interview aired Friday night on "20/20" and "Nightline.") Walters tried to pin the king down on terrorism, women's rights, unemployment, and oil. But thanks to some slippery translation by his aide Adel Al-Jubeir (whose voiceover was heard by American audiences throughout the interview) and some selective quoting by the state-run Saudi Press Agency (which had published excerpts from the interview within a day of the broadcast), the king managed to convey very different messages to his American audience and his Saudi one. In other words, Abdullah got exactly what he wanted. Below, a guide to how he did it.
The missing Jews. On "Nightline," Barbara Walters observed, "Terrorism to some degree starts with extremism, and there are people who feel that the educational system here in Saudi Arabia has in the past contributed to extremism and hatred." This remark was accurately translated into Arabic by the Saudi Press Agency, in a lengthy document which purports to be "the text of the interview" and does in fact render in Arabic about 99 percent of the broadcast text. But the rest of Walters's observation--"When we were here three years ago, we found textbooks that called for the killing of Jews"--was conveniently left out of the published version, without an ellipsis to indicate an omission. Thus Walters's subsequent question--"What is being done to stop this ... extremist teaching?"--was relayed to Arabic-speaking audiences without the necessary context.
The missing qualifier. The King eventually responded in Arabic to a follow-up question on whether he had changed the content of Saudi textbooks. Alas, his answer was not accurately translated into English. The voiceover quoted him as saying, "Yes, we have. ... We have toned them down." In Arabic, by contrast, the monarch can clearly be heard saying, "Yes, we have adjusted them a little. ... We have toned them down a little." [emphasis mine] For its part, the Saudi Press Agency version of the interview omits both the question and the king's answer. Thus, on a hot button issue for both Americans and Arabs, the monarch effectively delivered multiple messages: Americans heard him asserting that he has heeded their call; Arab viewers of "Nightline"--which would have included any Saudis who tuned in to ABC via satellite television--heard him asserting that he has caved only "a little" to Americans; and readers of the Saudi Press Agency transcript were spared any knowledge of the textbook controversy altogether.
The missing jobless. Asked by Walters what measures the kingdom has taken to address burgeoning unemployment among Saudi youth, Abdullah, via his translator, acknowledged he has a modest problem: "We need to find approximately 100,000 jobs for those who are seeking jobs but cannot find them at this time." (Walters subsequently told viewers in a voiceover that American estimates put Saudi unemployment much higher, perhaps as high as "15 to 25 percent." Saudi Arabia's population includes more than 15 million people over the age of 15. Even if we disregard resident non-nationals, a 15 percent unemployment rate would mean far more than 100,000 people who are seeking jobs but cannot find them.) In the Saudi Press Agency version the king is quoted in Arabic as imparting a slightly different message: "Only about 100,000 remain who are looking for work, and most of them are waiting for work to become available for them in the cities." The implication of this statement is that "most" of the 100,000 jobless are jobless by choice--because they prefer not to work in rural areas where jobs are available. So either Saudi unemployment is significantly downplayed or it is virtually nonexistent, depending on which version of Abdullah's words you tune into.
The missing compliment. On television, the king paid Walters a fawning compliment. When she asked him whether Iran's nuclear program is worrisome to Saudi Arabia, he replied, "The questioner is often times more knowledgeable than the questionee"--and the two chortled at each other for a moment. Perhaps such a compliment to a foreign woman is just a tad over the top for Saudi Arabia's patriarchal society; for many Saudis, after all, the spectacle of their king being interviewed by a woman baring her hair is novel enough. Whatever the reason, the king's deferential compliment to Walters was omitted from the Saudi Press Agency transcript.
The missing tense. At one point, the king's translator appears to have cleverly shifted tense, rendering in English "I will not deny that such extremism existed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" what read as distinctly more enduring in the king's Arabic as transcribed by the Saudi Press Agency: "I will not deny the existence of extremism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." [emphasis mine]
To be sure, the problems with the king's interview were not limited to the contrasts among the different versions. Both "Nightline" and the Saudi Press Agency agree, for example, that Abdullah noted that his country has "been accused in the past of having a hand in what happened in Iraq, in particular with regards to terrorism and the violence, and we are innocent of these charges." This assertion by the king, unchallenged by Walters, flies in the face of well-known facts--notably, the prominent role of mainstream, pro-government Saudi clerics in goading on the Iraqi insurgency. The king should have been challenged to denounce the well-known fatwa by 26 Saudi clerics urging "the militant Iraqi people" to slay American soldiers in Iraq. Then again, even if Walters had forced Abdullah to answer that question, he would no doubt have managed to convey one sentiment to his American audience--and quite another to his Saudi subjects.
Joseph Braude is the author of The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World.
The King's English
by Joseph Braude
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 10.17.05
Barbara Walters met her match last week in the Saudi port city of Jeddah. The veteran ABC journalist was in town to conduct King Abdullah's first television interview with an American audience since he assumed the throne in August. (The interview aired Friday night on "20/20" and "Nightline.") Walters tried to pin the king down on terrorism, women's rights, unemployment, and oil. But thanks to some slippery translation by his aide Adel Al-Jubeir (whose voiceover was heard by American audiences throughout the interview) and some selective quoting by the state-run Saudi Press Agency (which had published excerpts from the interview within a day of the broadcast), the king managed to convey very different messages to his American audience and his Saudi one. In other words, Abdullah got exactly what he wanted. Below, a guide to how he did it.
The missing Jews. On "Nightline," Barbara Walters observed, "Terrorism to some degree starts with extremism, and there are people who feel that the educational system here in Saudi Arabia has in the past contributed to extremism and hatred." This remark was accurately translated into Arabic by the Saudi Press Agency, in a lengthy document which purports to be "the text of the interview" and does in fact render in Arabic about 99 percent of the broadcast text. But the rest of Walters's observation--"When we were here three years ago, we found textbooks that called for the killing of Jews"--was conveniently left out of the published version, without an ellipsis to indicate an omission. Thus Walters's subsequent question--"What is being done to stop this ... extremist teaching?"--was relayed to Arabic-speaking audiences without the necessary context.
The missing qualifier. The King eventually responded in Arabic to a follow-up question on whether he had changed the content of Saudi textbooks. Alas, his answer was not accurately translated into English. The voiceover quoted him as saying, "Yes, we have. ... We have toned them down." In Arabic, by contrast, the monarch can clearly be heard saying, "Yes, we have adjusted them a little. ... We have toned them down a little." [emphasis mine] For its part, the Saudi Press Agency version of the interview omits both the question and the king's answer. Thus, on a hot button issue for both Americans and Arabs, the monarch effectively delivered multiple messages: Americans heard him asserting that he has heeded their call; Arab viewers of "Nightline"--which would have included any Saudis who tuned in to ABC via satellite television--heard him asserting that he has caved only "a little" to Americans; and readers of the Saudi Press Agency transcript were spared any knowledge of the textbook controversy altogether.
The missing jobless. Asked by Walters what measures the kingdom has taken to address burgeoning unemployment among Saudi youth, Abdullah, via his translator, acknowledged he has a modest problem: "We need to find approximately 100,000 jobs for those who are seeking jobs but cannot find them at this time." (Walters subsequently told viewers in a voiceover that American estimates put Saudi unemployment much higher, perhaps as high as "15 to 25 percent." Saudi Arabia's population includes more than 15 million people over the age of 15. Even if we disregard resident non-nationals, a 15 percent unemployment rate would mean far more than 100,000 people who are seeking jobs but cannot find them.) In the Saudi Press Agency version the king is quoted in Arabic as imparting a slightly different message: "Only about 100,000 remain who are looking for work, and most of them are waiting for work to become available for them in the cities." The implication of this statement is that "most" of the 100,000 jobless are jobless by choice--because they prefer not to work in rural areas where jobs are available. So either Saudi unemployment is significantly downplayed or it is virtually nonexistent, depending on which version of Abdullah's words you tune into.
The missing compliment. On television, the king paid Walters a fawning compliment. When she asked him whether Iran's nuclear program is worrisome to Saudi Arabia, he replied, "The questioner is often times more knowledgeable than the questionee"--and the two chortled at each other for a moment. Perhaps such a compliment to a foreign woman is just a tad over the top for Saudi Arabia's patriarchal society; for many Saudis, after all, the spectacle of their king being interviewed by a woman baring her hair is novel enough. Whatever the reason, the king's deferential compliment to Walters was omitted from the Saudi Press Agency transcript.
The missing tense. At one point, the king's translator appears to have cleverly shifted tense, rendering in English "I will not deny that such extremism existed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" what read as distinctly more enduring in the king's Arabic as transcribed by the Saudi Press Agency: "I will not deny the existence of extremism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." [emphasis mine]
To be sure, the problems with the king's interview were not limited to the contrasts among the different versions. Both "Nightline" and the Saudi Press Agency agree, for example, that Abdullah noted that his country has "been accused in the past of having a hand in what happened in Iraq, in particular with regards to terrorism and the violence, and we are innocent of these charges." This assertion by the king, unchallenged by Walters, flies in the face of well-known facts--notably, the prominent role of mainstream, pro-government Saudi clerics in goading on the Iraqi insurgency. The king should have been challenged to denounce the well-known fatwa by 26 Saudi clerics urging "the militant Iraqi people" to slay American soldiers in Iraq. Then again, even if Walters had forced Abdullah to answer that question, he would no doubt have managed to convey one sentiment to his American audience--and quite another to his Saudi subjects.
Joseph Braude is the author of The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World.
posted by Marko at 10/24/2005 04:46:00 PM
<< Home