The foreign media: Lost in translation!
Today, Catholics from all over the world celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A cursory check with Catholic history tells us that a document containing the commemoration of this feast was found from a hymn written in the sixth century originating in Palestine and Syria right after the Council or Ephesus declared her as “Theotokos” or Mother of God. Then there is also the Church of St. Anne within the walls of Jerusalem, which archaeologist uncovered near the Shepherd’s pool in the fifth century.
While today reminds us of the official birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary… next month, on Oct. 13, it will be 99 years since the final apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the three children in Fatima, Portugal that is known to the world as the Miracle of the Dancing Sun which was witnessed by 70,000 people at the Cova de Ira in Fatima. This great miracle was described by witnesses as the sun dancing around the heavens, while others say that the sun zoomed towards the earth in a zigzag motion leading people to believe that the sun would collide with the earth and this divine spectacle took place in 10 minutes.
To us Catholics… the reality that the Mother of God every now and then returns to earth through many of her apparitions to warn God’s children of the coming chastisement unless we repent is proof of God’s love for his creation. This is why I also need to remind our readers that next month is the 99th year since God asked the Catholic Church through the Blessed Virgin Mary for the consecration of Russia into her Immaculate Heart in union with all the bishops. Alas even this issue is debated within the walls of the Vatican. But the promise of our Blessed Lady in return for this consecration is world peace… something that when you open your TV sets… you will see that we are a very troubled world and this world needs Fatima!
*** Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte may have expressed regrets over his scathing remarks about US President Barack Obama, but then this is Pres. Duterte who by now we already know is able to speak his own mind even using foul language… which he later regretted. So that one-on-one meeting with US Pres. Obama has not materialized and let me say it here once more, that it is pointless to meet with the outgoing, lame duck US President who has only a few more months to go in the White House.
However if there is anything that the foreign media ought to learn from this incident, it is the reality that this world is just too full of cuss words and the people of the world today would like our leaders to show some kind of political correctness. But what happened in this incident is that the foreign press was simply lost in translation. When Pres. Duterte uttered the words, “Putang Ina” to us Filipinos it is just a simple cuss or in Binisaya “Pamalikas” but to the foreign media, they had to translate it to its literal meaning… which means in English “Son of a bitch or son of a whore” and this is the translation that raised the eyebrows of the international community.
How the world has changed since, Rhett Butler uttered the first cuss phrase in the movie “Gone with the Wind” when he said to Scarlett O’Hara “Frankly
my dear, I don’t give a damn” and ever since that movie, profanity has become normal language that you’ll hear in a block buster movie or on TV. When Pres. Duterte said “Tang Ina” he didn’t mean to say that Pres. Obama was the son of a whore, he was merely saying it as a figure of speech. In Cebuano we don’t use even Putang Ina when we do “Pamalikas” we say “Boang ka” (you are crazy) or “Leche!” or Lecheng Yawa! The English translation of that is “Milk Devil”!
So I suggest that the foreign media get a crash course on the various cuss words in the Cebuano and Tagalog language, the language of Pres. Duterte. The other example was when Pres. Duterte was in Camp Lapu- Lapu last August 5 and mentioned about the US Ambassador Philip Goldberg saying,
“Kausap namin si Kerry. Okay naman siya kasi nag-away kami ng Ambassador niya, yung Ambassador, ‘yung bakla.
Putang ina buwisit ako diyan.” While Pres. Duterte was speaking in Tagalog, however, when Cebuanos say that you are “Bakla” while it may mean that you tag a person as a homosexual… but it also means that the person is a coward. We also use the word “Bayot” to mean the same thing.
Meanwhile, it is good that US Pres. Obama postponed his meeting with Pres. Duterte so that they can find a better ground for a future meeting with the two. But the Americans should be advised to brush up on their own history and perhaps read the book “Imperial Cruise” written by James Bradley, author of the best selling book, “Flag of our Fathers” so they will have a clearer understanding of what Pres. Duterte meant about what the American soldiers did to the Moros in Mindanao at the turn of the century when grave human rights violations or atrocities were committed!