Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Annals of 'that's what'

This just in from The Ridger at the Slavic affairs desk, who translates:

Авиакатастрофа Ту-154 под Смоленском, в которой погиб президент Польши Лех Качиньский, могла быть подстроена российскими спецслужбами. Об этом в интервью телеканалу TVN24 заявил Марчин Дубенецкий, муж и представитель Марты Качиньской-Дубенецкой, единственной дочери президента, погибшей в катастрофе.

The TU-154 air crash near Smolensk in which Polish President Lech Kaczynski perished, may have been orchestrated by the Russian intelligence service. That's what TVN24 was told by Marcin Dubieniecki, husband and representative of Marta Kaczynska-Dubieniecka, the president's only daughter, who died in the crash.


Good to know we aren't the only country where detail editing is in short supply (as The Ridger points out, Marta didn't die in the crash
.) But what is it that makes "that's what" such a bridge-building example of cross-cultural journalism?

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Picky said...

I would have guessed that whereas in your previous examples the form was used to impress (it doesn't), in this example it's just a rather clumsy way of breaking up what would otherwise have been a long and complicated sentence (a bit like this one, actually).

3:24 AM, January 27, 2011  
Anonymous LisaMc said...

To be fair, that literally translates as "Marcin Dubieniecki spoke about this in an interview with Channel 24" -- it's not passive in Russian and there's no "That's what." The sentence was probably translated the way it was to prevent the huge appositive from coming between the subject and the verb.

12:16 AM, January 29, 2011  

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