So what did Gabrielle Giffords say to Jared Loughner in Spanish?

The WSJ re the 2007 meeting:

Mr. Loughner said he asked the lawmaker, “How do you know words mean anything?” recalled Mr. Montanaro. He said Mr. Loughner was “aggravated” when Ms. Giffords, after pausing for a couple of seconds, “responded to him in Spanish and moved on with the meeting.”

So what got his goat? Did she say something derogatory about deconstructionism, Sarah Palin’s secret grammatical strategy for world domination? Or was it more like, “Hey man, get a translator”?

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Published
Last updated 10/01/2011

This post pre-dates my organ-grinding days, and may be imported from elsewhere.
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Barcelona (1399):

English language (462):

Föcked Translation (414): I posted to a light-hearted blog called Fucked Translation over on Blogger from 2007 to 2016, when I was often in Barcelona. Its original subtitle was "What happens when Spanish institutions and businesses give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word." I never actually did much Spanish-English translation (most of my work is from Dutch, French and German) but I was intrigued and amused by the hubristic Spanish belief, then common, that nepotism and quality went hand in hand, and by the nemeses that inevitably followed.
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Spain (1881):

Spanish language (504):

Translation (788):


Comments

  1. Perhaps not Derrida, but certainly a Humboldt-ian view of the role of grammar in shaping consciousness: "Loughner seemed ticked off by what he believed to be a pervasive authoritarianism. "The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar," he wrote in one YouTube video." (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=2)

    Perhaps Sapir and Whorf should be dug up and tried too.

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