Translator again distorts President's message

In what is clearly an acute embarrassment to the Government of Sri Lanka, a distorted official text of what President Maithripala Sirisena told US Secretary of State John Kerry during official talks last week, has been handed over to the United States Embassy in Colombo.

That is for onward transmission to the State Department in Washington D.C. The reason - the simultaneous translator who interpreted President Sirisena's speech in Sinhala had added his own words or deleted some creating an entirely erroneous impression. That was not what the President of Sri Lanka had wanted to convey.

Making matters worse was the fact that a similar incident had also occurred when Sirisena visited Britain and was holding talks with Premier David Cameron. His Conservative Party has won this week's parliamentary elections giving Mr Cameron another five-year term.

Now, the Presidential Secretariat has hurriedly placed advertisements in the local newspapers calling for applications for "Recruitment to the Posts of Interpreters/Translators..." Applicants have been told to apply before May 15 -

a move to ensure qualified personnel are recruited immediately. The advertisement has said that the "salary is negotiable."

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera who had just ended a news conference at Siri Kotha, the United National Party (UNP) headquarters in Kotte, and was walking out when he was accosted by a journalist. He was asked about the translation fiasco. Samaraweera admitted somewhat embarrassingly that it had happened.

Jokingly, he was asked "why don't you hire G.L. Peiris. He is very good in both Sinhala and English?" Replied a witty Samaraweera: "We can consider that after the parliamentary elections."