From: "Robert Burns" <ctirip@earthlink.net>
Subject: "lost in translation" [re: Clinton's mistranslated button prop]
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009
RE: Clinton May Help Obama 'Reboot' Russia Relationship By Ken Fireman (JRL 2009-46)
In another U.S. diplomatic "lost in translation" moment, Hillary Clinton presented Sergei Lavrov with a "restart" button as a symbolic gesture of how the two nations should restart their relations. Of course, with all the money thrown at the State Department, somehow...someone (I pray it wasn't a State Department translator) chose the wrong Russian word: instead of "restart" ("perezagruzka"), the novelty gift bore the word "overcharge" ("peregruzka"). "Peregruzka" has a host of other similarly funny (in the context of U.S.-Russia relations) definitions, such as "congestion," "overburden," "overload," and "overstrain."
The March 6 NBC Nightly News report on the linguistic misstep can be viewed here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29557054#29557054.