Hopefully, the pen mightier than the sword...

[DeepIron]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7106335.stm

"It shows that the Iranian president is not only losing support among ordinary people because of economic hardship, he is also angering part of the establishment for using the nuclear issue to bolster his personal power."

"The paper said Mr Ahmadinejad was using this tactic to discredit his political rivals prior to the parliamentary elections due early next year. It called on Iran's judiciary to perform its duty and punish people who make baseless allegations and cause public anxiety."

Well, Mahmoud, hope you can take the heat...

[Subnuts]

A few months ago I was listening to an interview with a prominent Iranian-born expert of Iranian politics (I can't remember his name).

He returned to Iran and asked a number of people if they believed their country should acquire nuclear weapons. Most of them said yes. He then asked them if they'd rather use the money needed for nuclear weapons to take their family out for dinner once a week. It turns out that chelow kabab and pollo taste a lot better than plutonium! :rotfl:

[Winston Caine]

I'm not familiar with the political system in Iran, but from Subnuts' post, I feel they are indoctrinated in the way of getting nuclear weapons. So in the first thing, it's the demagogical answer, answer of the nation, and from the second, the answer of an individual.
However, in the past, groups have caused more damage than individuals, so...
I'm optimistic. We'll see. :hmm:

[DeepIron]

It's heartening to see this kind of press in Iran. Personally, I have no issues if the Iranian people want to develop nuclear energy for peaceful (read: power production) needs. But, with guys like MA in control, and with his anti-American rhetoric, I can't help but wonder if he would have another agenda.

This situation reminds of what Saddam Hussein was doing before the US lead invasion. He was saying one thing, and then thumbing his nose at the global community...

As long as the people can have a voice, there is hope...

[Chock]

The thing about rhetoric in Arabian countries is that much of the media's interpretation of it is a result of poor translations that are done by people who either don't know the langauge(s) perhaps as well as they should, or if they do, are not interested in making it sound as mundane as it perhaps should in the correct context of the language.

Sensationalism sells stories, and the mass media is well aware of this, often to an irresponsible degree. The recent financial crisis with the Northern Rock building society in the UK is a good example of this manipulation of stories. Some people were deciding to take their large sums out of the NR because they suspected something was up, and this might mean a drop in the interest rate they'd get. Of course it was not enough to simply report this in a mundane way for the media, they had to descibe it as a 'Panic', which of course was the catalyst for it actually then becoming a panic as everyone who was quite content to let their money stay where it was, then began thinking 'Oh my God, there must be something up if all these people are panicking as the media says'. And that aint reporting the news, that's creating it.

For many colloqualisms and ideoms in Arabic, there is no direct word-for-word translation, the phrasing in Arabian languages is often very poetic in comparison to Western phraseology (which is sort of ironic when you consider how many words we use that are Arabic in origin). As a result, a direct translation often sounds like much more than it is meant to when 'creatively translated'. A classic example of this was during the run up to the 1991 Gulf War, when some Iraqi pilots were quoted as saying something along the lines of 'We will drink the blood of our enemies' - of course the media picked up on this and tried to make it seem indicative of what 'savages' these people were, little realising (or more likely not really caring) that in a language where poetic analogies are common, a more realistic translation would have been to see it in the context it was intended, i.e. probably the equivalent of a US pilot saying 'We're going to kick their asses'. Now flip that one around for a second and imagine what an Arabian pilot would make of it if he took 'kick their asses' in the literal sense. He'd probably think 'WTF are they talking about?!! I thought we were going to be fighting in aeroplanes?!!'

Here's another very famous mix up between the US and an Arabian country, in this case Saudi Aabia. Being a famously 'dry' country as far as alchoholic beverages go, there is a massive market for soft drinks, notably a very popular US fizzy drink that comes in a bright red can, yup that one, which some years ago had the advertising tag line 'Coke is Life - Enjoy Coca Cola. Now, when this campaign was being translated for use in Saudi, a local US advertising rep somewhat foolishly decided not to use a specialist translation service to get the phrase translated into the correct context for use in some arabic dialects, instead just asking someone to translate it word for word, so they did, not being aware of the context for which the translation was required (i.e. billboard posters along the highway advertising a refreshing soft drink). So these 'translated' posters all get printed up, imported into the country and start going up all over the place, with words to the effect (in Arabic) that 'If you drink Coca Cola, it will bring all your dead relatives back to life'. Of course you can imagine the outrage it caused out in the sticks of Saudi. As a result of this bungle, the advertising rep responsible in Saudi was damn near lynched by infuriated bereaved Saudis, and he had to be taken into protective custody and sneaked out of the country!

So don't take everything you 'hear' that is supposedly said by some foreign dude literally, especially in an Arabian country; the media wants you to be outraged and shocked by stuff, if you weren't, you'd never tune in to them again. Just remember, they don't call it a language barrier for nothing.

:D Chock