A tweet today from the BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson....
....has drawn an understandable response. People are talking about the language of genocide.
It's the shocking word "purification" which gives that Salvini quote such a Nazistic flavour.
A stray comment on his Twitter thread led me to check the quote though. Googling the original, it reads:
Ci vuole una pulizia di massa anche in Italia. Via per via, quartiere per quartiere, con le maniere forti se serve perché ci sono interi pezzi d'Italia fuori controllo.
The key word there is "pulizia". It's the word John Simpson translates as "purification".
Pop it into Google Translate, however, and 'pulizia' translates as meaning 'cleaning' or 'sweeping', so the phrase (in full, and given in context) would now translate as:
It needs a mass cleaning (or sweeping) in Italy too. Street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, with strong measures if needed, because there are entire parts of Italy out of control.
It's still a very strong statement, but it sounds a good deal less Nazi-like than "We need a mass purification", doesn't it?
Furthermore, if you put "We need a mass purification" into Google Translate it brings up, "Abbiamo bisogno di una purificazione di massa".
In other words, there's an Italian word which specifically means "purification", and that's "purificazione". And Matteo Salvini didn't use it.
In other words, there's an Italian word which specifically means "purification", and that's "purificazione". And Matteo Salvini didn't use it.
I know Google Translate is hardly infallible but I've tried translating and re-translating these words and phrases back and forth and rechecking the source and I'm now certain that John Simpson was tweeting a mistranslation of Matteo Salvini here....
....and, very possibly, a deliberate mistranslation. Someone somewhere probably wanted to make Mr Salvini sound like a Nazi and, thus, render his statements abhorrent to all decent people.
So where did John Simpson get his translation from? Was he tweeting 'fake news' to his followers? If so, was that out of laziness or malice? (I'd suspect laziness - and a willingness to believe the worst.)
