Translation: A Free Primer for the WaPo

Jerome, patron saint of translators, finds a “wicked bible” — the infamous edition in which “not” is left out of one of the Ten Commandments, thanks to a printer’s error — in the pages of the WaPo. Hence the expression “the devil is in the details.”

Item: The ‘Cauldron of Oaxaca’: World Opinion Roundup (WaPo)

In an analysis of the newsweekly Proceso, Jorge Carrasco blamed the standoff on an “absence of power” in the Mexican government. He noted that for five months, Fox refused to intervene in Oaxaca, saying it was a local issue. Only after Fox sent in the troops did the Mexican Congress and Senate call on Ruiz to resign for the good of Oaxaca.

Okay, maybe he said that.

Does not sound like the Bachiller Sansón Carrasco that I read all the time, though. Let’s read on:

Whatever happens next, Carrasco says that Oaxaca shows the demands of social movements around the country “are not going to be satisfied by electoral democracy.”

Hang on. That is emphatically not what he says.

Here’s the passage in question, from the Proceso Web site (I subscribe):

Cualquiera que sea la resolución del Senado, incluida la permanencia de Ruiz, lo único que se logrará será un intento de darle cauce institucional a la crisis; pero permanecerá el problema de fondo que no han querido ver las autoridades estatales y federales, incluido el Legislativo: que las demandas de los movimientos sociales como los de Oaxaca, San Salvador Atenco, en el Estado de México, o Chiapas no se satisfacen con la democracia electoral.

Whatever the Senate decides, including the maintenance of Ruiz in power, the only thing that will be accomplished will be an attempt to give the crisis an institutional channel; but the deeper problem will persist, the problem that state and federal authorities, including the Congress, do not wish to see: that the demands of social movements like those in Oaxaca, San Salvador de Atenco in Mexico State, or Chiapas, are not satisfied with [or are not being satisfied by] electoral democracy.

Se satisfacen, rather than than se satisfazcan (might, could or should be satisifed) or se satisfacerán (will be satisfied). Present indicative third person plural: “They are not satisified.”

Aw, Colin, you’re a picky bastard.

What’s the difference, really?

Well, what’s the difference between the present and the future, really? Between así están las cosas and que será será?
The verb in the present indicative can sometimes be translated in the future tense in many Romance languages — it’s a familiar trope in Portuguese journalisticalese, for example — but in this case I think the context demands otherwise, to avoid an undesirable nuance which I do not think the context allows us to infer that Carrasco means to imply:

That these movements reject electoral democracy now and will continue to do so in the future.

This tends to perpetuate the idea that the Oaxaca teachers and their supporters and dicatorship of the proletariat revolutionary vanguards.

The context I am referring to:

Las diferentes muestras de la ingobernabilidad que padece México demuestran que no basta con la alternancia, por definición limitada, para organizar las diferentes expresiones políticas.

The different demonstrations of ingovernability that Mexico now suffers from show that the rotation of power [from one party to another], in a limited sense, is not up to the task of organizing the various political forces in the country.

Esas manifestaciones demandan un nuevo sistema que pronto tendrá que empezar a diseñarse y echarse a andar antes de que la ingobernabilidad se extienda por otras partes del país.

These grievances require a new system, one that will have to be elaborated and put into action fast, before ingovernability extends to other parts of the country.

In other words, the current system of electoral democracy has failed to address these grievances, so a new system is needed that will not fail to do so.

See what I mean? The present system is not satisfying these demands. A future system must do so.

The implication being that a future system that does satisfy these demands will, or at least might, satisfy the social movements.

That is, social movements can and will, or at least may, and indeed should, in my view, be satisfied with an electoral democracy that does succeed in addressing their grievances — which in my view, as a regular reader, Carrasco views as justified grievances.

As do I.

When a man with a gun orders you to vote Ulises Ruiz, and no one stops him, electoral democracy is not working out very well for you.

You would be a fool to be satisfied with that crap.

As to whether the movement will be satisfied with a solution consistent with the Mexican constitution: They constantly insist that they will.

And they have a lot more credibility at this point than their enemies.

I could be wrong. But no one is knocking themselves out to show me the error of my ways in terms likely to persuade me — i.e., the terms of the so-called “reality-based community,” of which I am a card-carrying member.

Proceso, recall, is the main force behind a petition for a “citizen’s recount” of the last presidential election, recall, and has done more than any publication to investigate the myriad irregularities in that process.

Careless translation can really futz things up, WaPo — if that is what this was. You misrepresent the views of the author you are translating.

That, I think, clearly requires a correction.