Translation of phrase "wiped off the map"
Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map"
[4][5][6], an English
idiom which means to "obliterate totally",
[7] and "destroy completely", such as by powerful bombs,
[8] or other catastrophes.
[9]
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[10]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."
[11]
The
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
[T]his regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.
[12]
Iran has repeatedly rejected the allegations that Ahmadinejad has stated 'Israel must be wiped off the map'.
[13][14][15] On
20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map,” saying Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned,"
Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the
European Parliament. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognise legally this regime," he said.
[16][17][18]
In a
June 11,
2006 analysis of the translation controversy,
New York Times deputy foreign editor
Ethan Bronner stated that Ahmadinejad had said that Israel was to be wiped off the map. After noting the objections of critics such as Cole and Steele, Bronner said: "But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (
www.president.ir/eng/), refer to
wiping Israel away. Bronner stated: "..it is hard to argue that, from Israel's point of view, Mr. Ahmadinejad poses no threat. Still, it is true that he has never specifically threatened war against Israel. So did Iran's president call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question."
[11]
On
June 15,
2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent
Jonathan Steele cites several Persian speakers and translators who state that the phrase in question is more accurately translated as an "occupying regime" being "eliminated" or "wiped off" or "wiped away" from "the page of time" or "the pages of history", rather than "Israel" being "wiped off the map".
[19]
A synopsis of Mr Ahmadinejad's speech on the Iranian Presidential website states:
He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away. [20]
The same idiom in his speech on
December 13,
2006 was translated as "wipe out" by
Reuters:
Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out."
[21]
Iran's state-owned
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting translated Ahmadinejad's comments as "Israel must be wiped off the map",
[22]
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#2005_.22World_Without_Zionism.22_speech
