{"id":1088,"date":"2010-06-17T16:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2010\/06\/17\/lost-in-translation"},"modified":"2010-06-17T16:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T16:01:00","slug":"lost-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1088","title":{"rendered":"Lost in translation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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So … just how intense are feelings these days along the Gulf Coast?<\/p>\n

Consider this sequence of events:<\/p>\n

BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, a native of Sweden, declared that he feels badly for the “small people” affected by the catastrophic oil spill. The reaction was immediate — and very angry.<\/p>\n

My question is this: How come? Svanberg’s native language clearly isn’t English and he likely isn’t well-schooled in American idiom. He well could have meant to say “the little guy,” which in this country means something far different than “small people.”<\/p>\n

Gulf Coast residents who are devastated by the spill’s effects all but called Svanberg out back to duke it out. One guy went on TV to declare that “small people kicked (the British) butts” during the War of 1812.<\/p>\n

Oh my. Everyone understands the anguish. But let’s take a deep breath here.<\/p>\n

The BP chairman’s statement clearly got lost in the translation, so to speak.<\/p>\n

The late — and insanely rich socialite — Leona Helmsley, who once said that only “little people pay taxes,” knew better than to say something so crass. English, after all, was her first language.<\/p>\n

I’m not so sure that Carl-Henric Svanberg is guilty of such arrogance.<\/p>\n\n

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So … just how intense are feelings these days along the Gulf Coast? Consider this sequence of events: BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, a native of Sweden, declared that he feels badly for the “small people” affected by the catastrophic oil spill. The reaction was immediate — and very angry. My question is this: How come? … Continue reading Lost in translation<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}