Re: [Marxism] Fidel on US elections and threats to Obama

[Aaron Aarons <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: "Richard Fidler" <rfidler_8@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:23:27 -0400
>
>I'm afraid Fidel is the victim of a translation error here, when the English 
>version below and in the full web text has him saying:
>
>"Meditating on the current US public debt -$10,266 trillions-
>that President Bush is laying on the shoulders of the new generations in
>that country, I took to calculating how long it would take a man to count
>the debt that he has doubled in eight years."
>
>The Spanish reads:
>
>"Meditando sobre la deuda pública actual de Estados Unidos que el presidente 
>Bush descarga sobre las nuevas generaciones en ese país -- diez mil doscientos 
>sesenta y seis millones de millones --, se me ocurrió calcular el tiempo que 
>tardaría un hombre para contar la deuda que aquél prácticamente ha duplicado 
>en ocho años."

No, the translation is correct. But there are two versions of the Spanish text 
on the web, with the following differences:

1) with correct figures:

>Meditando sobre la deuda pública actual de Estados Unidos que el presidente 
>Bush descarga sobre las nuevas generaciones en ese país ?10,3 millones de 
>millones?, se me ocurrió calcular el tiempo que tardaría un hombre para contar 
>la deuda que aquél prácticamente ha duplicado en ocho años.
>
>Suponiendo ocho horas de trabajo neto diario sin perder un segundo, al ritmo 
>rápido de cien billetes de un dólar por minuto, 300 días de trabajo al año, un 
>hombre tardaría 715 mil años para contar esa suma.

2) with figures off by a factor of 1,000:

>Meditando sobre la deuda pública actual de Estados Unidos que el presidente 
>Bush descarga sobre las nuevas generaciones en ese país ?diez mil doscientos 
>sesenta y seis millones de millones?, se me ocurrió calcular el tiempo que 
>tardaría un hombre para contar la deuda que aquél prácticamente ha duplicado 
>en ocho años.
>
>Suponiendo ocho horas de trabajo neto diario sin perder un segundo, al ritmo 
>rápido de cien billetes de un dólar por minuto, 300 días de trabajo al año, un 
>hombre tardaría setecientos diez mil millones de años para contar esa suma.

It was a translation of the latter, incorrect, version that Fred Feldman posted.

>In other words, the US public debt is actually 10.266 trillian (or, as the 
>Spanish says, 10,266 billion) dollars. The translator used a comma in place of 
>a period. In Spanish a billion is a million million, BTW, while in US English 
>it is a thousand million.

Note that the functions of the comma and period in numbers in Spanish (and, I 
think, in most European languages) is the reverse of their functions in 
English. This confusion may have affected whoever provided Fidel with the 
figures for the (presumably original) incorrect version.

Also, since the Spanish word "billón" doesn't appear in either version of the 
Spanish text, its meaning is irrelevant to the translation from Spanish to 
English, although it may have been part of the same confusion I mentioned above.

>BTW, while in US English it is a thousand million.
>
>Fidel's example, the man counting those $100 bills, is roughly accurate 
>however.

Only in the correct Spanish version, not in the incorrect one (or its English 
translation), where the errors appear to be consistent with each other.

- Aaron

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