Lost in Translation

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the AP story where they did a one-on-one interview with Trump, and he was so incomprehensible that they had to insert the phrase, "Donald Trump is unintelligible" into the transcript 16 times.  SIXTEEN times.  If you were stopped by a police officer while driving and that happened, he'd bring out the breathalyzer.

And that doesn't even tough on the fantasy world he was in when being interviewed.  Saying he was "almost there" on accomplishing all his goals in his first 100 days -- with only a week to go.  And trying to pretend that he never had supported WikiLeaks -- even saying he'd never heard of them -- when he repeated had said (and it's on video tape) that "I love WikiLeaks" throughout the campaign.  And noting that when he would slam NATO during the campaign, he admitted he didn't actually know what they did.  (I don't know what's worse:  that he didn't know what NATO did, or that he relentlessly slammed them without knowing what they did.)  And more -- much more.

It's so bad what he's saying that "Donald Trump is unintelligible" is the good part, the one thing that even comes close to saving him.

The sad thing is, the "unintelligible" part of all this is just par for the course.  A few weeks earlier, the Huffington Post published an article that would have been hilarious if it wasn't pathetic about how professional interpreters  have a hard time translating Trump when he's speaking.  The problem they say they face is that he rambles so much and often makes so little sense that if they translate exactly what he's saying...they themselves look bad -- but people think they're the ones screwing up!  And it's not just because the words are a mess, but because he's saying things that are factually questionable, which they sense even as they hear the words and then have to repeat them in another language.  As one Japanese interpreter says, if they translate Trump word for word, "We end up making ourselves sound stupid," You can read the article here.  It's pretty funny...except for the hole "pathetic" part.