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Irena's avatar

Great catch about Jenny Klauninger. Yeah, that's the sort of thing that "journalists" do. They put two facts next to each other (tore a flag; got a suspended sentence), strongly implying that they're related, even though they aren't.

They even do it in very small things, where you really wouldn't expect them to. Want my favorite example, courtesy of the NYT?

"Croft, the translator of Ukrainian literature, announced last summer that she would no longer translate works if her name didn’t appear on the cover — as it didn’t with her translation of the 2018 novel “Flights,” by the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/29/opinion/translator-credit-cover.html

Okay, reading comprehension question: What language does Olga Tokarczuk write in? [Hint: Not Ukrainian.]

Olga Tokarczuk is Polish and writes exclusively in Polish. I know that because I happen to have read a couple of her books recently, though of course, a 10 sec Google search would have told you as much. But anyway, it's ludicrous. They write an opinion piece about literary translation, and they cannot resist inserting "support for Ukraine" by - do you call it lying? I suppose they would say "But look, it's true, Croft translates from Ukrainian, and Tokarczuk did win the Nobel Prize, so nothing we said was false!" Right. That's "journalism" now.

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jan van ruth's avatar

reading comprehension question?

really?

how good of you to spot that she translates ukrainian literature and that that means the original is ukrainian.

and how good of you to actually provide a hint to the big unwashed masses that otherwise undoubtedly would never have been able to answer the question...

what an arrogant ass you are.

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Irena's avatar

"how good of you to spot that she translates ukrainian literature and that that means the original is ukrainian."

The whole point is that the original was NOT in Ukrainian.

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Irena's avatar

"Dr. Smith, the brain surgeon, performed a successful surgery on Mr. Jones."

What kind of surgery did Dr. Smith perform? Suppose it turns out that Dr. Smith performed a gallbladder surgery on Mr. Jones. Would you then say the sentence was a tiny little bit misleading? Just a lil' bit? And would it not be even more misleading if the whole piece only ever introduced Dr. Smith as a brain surgeon, and never once mentioned that Mr. Jones had problems with his gallbladder? No? Perfectly fine? Okay... Maybe you can get a job at the NYT. You'd fit right in!

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jan van ruth's avatar

maybe you could get a job at the NYT?

stating that the mentioning of the fact that she translates out of ukrainian is support for ukraine.

rather far fetched....

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Irena's avatar

And BTW, Tokarczuk is the main reason anyone cares about Croft. Fairly or not, a translator's reputation is a function of the reputation of the writers whom the translator translates. Tokarczuk is Croft's most famous author, by far. So, misleading the reader about Tokarczuk's nationality (and more importantly: the language Tokarczuk writes in) in an article in which her translator Croft is featured is, shall we say, interesting.

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Irena's avatar

No, stating that she translates from Ukrainian is not, in and of itself, support for Ukraine. However, strongly implying that a Ukrainian author won the Nobel prize, when in fact, the author in question is Polish and writes exclusively in Polish, is propaganda, pure and simple.

The only way a reader would read that article and conclude anything other than that Tokarczuk is a Ukrainian author would be if (a) the reader already happened to know who Tokarczuk was (as was my case), or (b) searched Tokarczuk after reading the article, only to be mightily surprised to learn she's actually Polish (and writes exclusively in Polish).

Now, why would NYT print something like that?

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kapock's avatar

“The first infection in Austria had occurred less than two months earlier when the first anti-mandate protests were gathering. … Then, however, there is the mass of people often represented at protests who embed their views in conspiracy theories …”

It seems likely to me (perhaps epimethius can confirm or refute) that when those “first anti-mandate protests were gathering,” presumably no later than mid-2020, the very premise that there would be vaccine mandates was dismissed by Der Standard writers and readers as a “conspiracy theory.” It certainly was by their counterparts in respectable opinion in the U.S.

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epimetheus's avatar

Of course the notion that there'd be mandates or the like was dismissed until later, including by the very same people. Same in Germany.

In this, the US satrapies mimic the imperial centre.

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Rick Larson's avatar

Sowing the seeds of their very own destruction.

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Barry O'Kenyan's avatar

Keep warm, Austrians - especially those brave ones who resisted the forced vaccination!

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jan van ruth's avatar

there will be no rise in the number of nazi's in far right parties.

a true nazi has long since been part of the Gruenen.

gruen from the outside, brown from the inside...

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