World Challenges for the XXIst century

[...] leave a comment » Five years after March 11th, which made Spain a target of the Islamist terror, Interior Minister has…. [...]

[...] ELDAR: Thank you for having me. Meanwhile, according to this site, Spain, which many accuse of appeasement, is the HOT SPOT for recruiting Al Qaeda [...]

Can anyone translate “March 11th, which made Spain a target of the Islamist terror” into English, please? Whomever translated that text from Spanish slightly overreached in the ability to produce a comprehensible text in any language, as illustrated by the curious expressed notion of a date which presumptively makes some country the mark of “Islamic terror” which actually suggests the contrary of the poster’s probable intent: that the date of the terrorist attack struck fear in the heart of “Islamists” (sic)…

Interesting. Was this posted as a critique of those who immorally attempt to translate yet miserably fail in the effort, of is this meant as condemnation of our Western calendar, or was the intent here merely to illustrate the merits of a clear writing style, by way of demonstrating the contrary?

Álvaro Degives-Más’s last blog post..Jo, Pe… ¡Enhorabuena!

Let’s start by the good part: you have a good day, too.

At least a better one than when you crafted your apparent reply to two quite obvious points: one, that what works in one language doesn’t in another. So, don’t use a date as a placeholder for the events. Just some good advice. Then, “Islamists” are generally understood to be scholars on the subject of Islam. That’s not the same as Muslims, followers of the religion. Now, in Spanish there’s this interesting aversion to repetition of a given noun, which leads to inventive allegorical references such as, let’s say, Israel as the “Hebrew” state. In English that doesn’t fly. My bottom line here: it’s not the translation that sucks, it’s the sorely lacking command of English by whoever mistranslated that, and in the process also inverted the intended meaning. Just a fair matter of point, I think.

The other point has more to do with building an argument that can strike at least some measure of comprehension in the casual reader. See, “terror” by itself means “fear” – not terrorism. Unless you refer to a “terror attack” which refers to an attack that is either based on or intends to create it. But “Islamic terror” is bare nonsense. Insofar as the intent is to connect Islam with terrorism, the proper expression would simply be Islamic terrorism. Now let’s assume that indeed the intent was to refer to “Islamic terrorism”. Here a new conundrum unfolds, as the notion of roughly one billion people engaging in terrorism seems somewhat hard to believe. Which leaves us little alternative than assuming that the base intent here is to simply connect a religion with one of the worst forms of criminal conduct. There you have it: so Muslims struck fear in Spain.

Except, it wasn’t “just” Muslims; the terrorists involved in the March 11 train attacks were about as closely attached to their religion as, oh say, Franco was to the so-called Movement. Both were merely handy excuses over which to perpetrate a regime of terror.

Now, while it’s certainly true that police and Interior Ministry officials alike do their best to avoid the previous government’s mistake, of gravely underestimating and ignoring a growing threat – right to the point of patently ignoring it and stubbornly insisting on another group of terrorist scumbags, more for reasons of political myopia than out of interest in protecting the public. So, avoiding that mistake and regularly raising the specter of Jihadist terrorists (!) seems like an appropriate hobby; it’s not all that dislike what the Bush administration did, with their occasional rising of the DHS color-code, if not “leaking” some ominous report suggesting an imminent threat. Let’s just say that it keeps the nerves trained.

Now, what you sadly ignore totally in your otherwise interesting post above, is that aside from varying degrees of fear, panic and terror, those atrocious scenes in Atocha and the other stations quickly also led other emotions: upset, anger, if not plain rage. Rage over hijacking a state of collective shock with absurdly childish insistence that no, it was really those ETA people. Calling up leading foreign correspondents, stressing that point. Calling up ambassadors, insisting on that issue. Pressuring foreign government leaders into quickly adopting a resolution in the UNSC condemning, in hindsight, the wrong people albeit for the right reasons. Making, in short, a total fool and disgrace of itself and the nation it represents on a tremendous, international scale. Oh yeah: and on the fly, trying to keep the faint hope alive that a sufficiently convinced populace that it was a “domestic” source might give them the sorely needed leverage to stay in power for another term.

The fact that some old fool – who curiously hasn’t been subject of a massive international manhunt, to wit: his ever recurring tape tantrums – can make calls to “reclaim” Al Andalus (it’s not just Ceuta or Melilla, it’s the rest as well) is hardly worthy mentioning. The fact that hardened, callous and above all murderous criminals are regularly ferreted out and arrested is. Compare that to the much-talked about “cultural conflict” in the Netherlands, where nonetheless the number of arrested Jihadist terrorist elements is, at best, symbolic in nature – notwithstanding the reality of a proportionally much larger degree (and history!) of resentment than in Spain as a modern country, which has only become an immigrant destination over the last two and a half decades. In the Netherlands, the “integration issue” harkens back to the 70s; talk about pent-up resentments… So, at least in Spain the bastards are actually tracked, hunted down, and arrested whenever and wherever they can.

A little bit as with the cocaine scene in Spain compared to the hasheesh scene in the Netherlands, where the number and amounts of impounded drugs is not exactly proportional to the levels of drug (ab)use.

Bottom line: as long as it hurts, that’s a good sign – it means you live.

Less hysteric Spain-centrism, and more common sense imbued participation in the realities of a society in (say) Western European neighbors, that could do with a little bit of that Spanish steely resolve in pursuing terrorists, instead of mouthing touchy-feely things like “cultural sensitivity” and “integration” of elements that should have been deported, if not tried years ago. Better late than never, no? Spain isn’t “the recruitment center” – it’s the center of counterterrorism, the real stuff. Countries like Germany could also do well by taking a closer look at how it’s done: pursue, arrest, prosecute, try – and then convict or release.

How much happier trans-Atlantic relations would have been, had a certain Texan taken a cue…

Other than that, you still have a good day – and please don’t give up your daytime job for translation into English. Honestly, you shouldn’t.