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A Georgian TV Channel Miss-Translated 90% of James Appathurai’s Statements

December 5, 2011

Former spokesperson of NATO James Appathurai exposed Georgian TV Channel in lying. Sakinform presents a short extract from Appathurai’s TV statement where he talks why he carries tape-recorder at meetings with journalists.

James Appathurai: “One of the challenges of being a spokesman is that you are not quoted correctly. I’ve had an interesting experience of giving a long interview to Georgian Television, a private Georgian TV channel. When they translated what I said into Georgian, it was not at all what I said, it was in fact almost polar opposite of what I said. I’d like to say it was a miss-translation but in fact it was 90% pure fiction which served particular political interest but which of course undermined others and had the potential to cause more tension.


I quickly intervened to go on the record and say that this was all not true, but there significant repulse in the time between when the original translation came out and when I had the chance to correct it which as I say caused real political heart burn happily for very short period of time. 

This is why we always as spokespeople carry little tape recorders around with us certainly for any kind of written interview and I make sure to tape it. I can tell you two or three times in the few years I have been doing this job there had been calls at the highest level to NATO headquarters to find out what I had said because the written journalist had written down something which was provocative but which was not happily what I had said even more happily we had recorded what I had said.

I am not unique in this. I think every spokesperson has had this challenge but certainly last couple of days has been another reminder to me that leaving home without my tape recorder is as bad as leaving home without my wallet because I just might need it at any given moment and this was certainly one time when I could have used it.”

Sakinform

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