Source:
https://scmp.com/news/asia/article/2128025/translating-trump-dirty-job-someone-has-do-it
Asia

Translating Trump: a ‘dirty’ job but someone has to do it

US President Donald Trump. Photo: AP

Claims US President Donald Trump used the word “s***hole” to describe some countries has sparked fury in some quarters and left many media scratching their heads on whether to repeat the slur.

But spare a thought for the non-English language media outlets that had to translate the colourful epithet into local languages.

The famously polite Japanese media tied themselves in knots trying not to offend their readers, with national broadcaster NHK sticking to “filthy countries”.

A toilet. Photo: handout
A toilet. Photo: handout

The BBC’s Japanese-language service used a phrase for a tank that holds excrement, which is often used as manure.

Japanese Newswire Jiji Press translated it as “countries like toilets”, using a colloquial but not necessarily vulgar term.

Meanwhile, the Sankei newspaper added nuance by translating it as “countries as dirty as outdoor toilets”.

South Korean media largely took their cue from the country’s biggest news agency Yonhap, which rendered the term as “beggar’s den”.

But the @AskAKorean account on Twitter had its own alternative. “I still think the more literal translation of ‘s*** bucket’ would have worked better,” it suggested.

Mainland Chinese media were very guarded in their use of the term, with most picking up the story from the overseas version of Peop le’s Daily, which translated it as “languo”, meaning “bad countries”.

The prize for the most obscure translation has to go to the CNA news agency in Taipei, which translated it as “countries where birds don’t lay eggs”.

A bird incubating an eggs. Photo: USFWS.
A bird incubating an eggs. Photo: USFWS.

Some countries in Southeast Asia struggled to translate the obscenity because of a lack of verbatim terminology but also due to the term itself, which might be considered too vulgar to translate literally.

Local media in Vietnam varied in strength from “dirty countries” to “rubbish countries” to “rotten countries”.

Voice of America’s Thai service, which is backed by the US, printed an explanation of the word itself in their article on the outburst, writing that “this English word could translate as a ‘hole of waste from excrement’, which reflects that he considered [them] low-class countries”.

In the Philippines, where the mainly English-language media have become used to their own President Rodrigo Duterte’s foul-mouthed outbursts, newspapers were nowhere near as coy.

“Trump: Why allow immigrants from ‘s***hole countries?’ headlined the Philippine Star – without the asterices.