U.S. President Donald Trump’s vulgar insult of Africa was a puzzle for many foreign media organisations, which didn’t have a ready translation of his epithet for their readers or listeners.
Their answers ranged from “dirty” to, well, dirtier.
While meeting with Senators on immigration, Mr. Trump questioned why the United States would accept more immigrants from Haiti and “s******e countries” in Africa, according to one participant and people briefed on the conversation.
“We have dozens of language services at the BBC which today are all discussing the right way to translate into their own language the word ‘s******e’ for their millions of listeners,” Paul Danahar, the editor of the BBC’s North America bureau, tweeted on January 12.
Japan’s Kyodo News wire service chose kusottare , which literally means “dripping with excrement”. The country’s national broadcaster NHK settled for “filthy”, while the Asahi Shimbun newspaper decided that a word meaning “outdoor toilets” conveyed the gist of Mr. Trump’s term.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency and other outlets translated the expletive as fenkeng literally “cesspit”.
In Africa, the continent that was the object of Mr. Trump’s insult, Tanzania’s Mwananchi newspaper translated his comment as mataifa chafu simply, “dirty countries”.
Taifa Leo, a sister Swahili publication to Kenya’s leading Daily Nation , chose nchi za kinyesi , a more or less direct translation that has a gentler word for excrement.
There is a more direct translation for Mr. Trump’s term in Swahili, editor Gilbert Mogire said. But, he explained, that would be “unprintable”.
