The Obama administration has commented that they want to "reset" American-Russian relations. With this in mind, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought a special red button to her first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The button had the worlds "Reset" and “Peregruzka” printed on it. Unfortunately, “Peregruzka” translates from Russian to “Overcharge”, not "Reset". That is right, someone failed/bumbled a one word translation and badly.
Beyond the ridiculousness of "Resetting" our relationship, and then badly skewing up the one word translation, does no one realize we just gave them a big red button to press. Someone must have pushed the reset button for their memory and forgot we spent the better half of the last century making sure that they would not push that big red button.
Next on the list is giving Vietnam the Poison Tipped Pungi Stick of "good relations". Of course instead of the words "good relations" we will accidentally print "die scum". Once that is complete it is on to Japan with the Mushroom Cloud of "prosperity". Despite going for "prosperity" we actually printed "radioactive".
Video embedded below. (From http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19719.html)
Are you trying to say that this was intentional on Clinton's part or she was sabotaged?
ReplyDeleteThis was an intentional play on words: "peregruzka" meaning "overload" (referring to current relations, overloaded with tensions), while "perezagruzka" means "reset" (which is supposed to alleviate this tension). Framing it as a mistake was an excellent move, setting things up for a joke and breaking with the condescending and sermonizing tone of the previous Administration. Why else would she make a point of asking Lavrov, whether the word was correct, if not to cue him for the second part of this play on words?
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting theory, but it seems a bit 'out there'. That notion is more comforting then thinking we have suddenly become unable to succeed in a one word translation.
ReplyDeleteI do not think this was some sort of intentional mistake, but you could be right.