Saturday, July 17, 2010
LOST IN TRANSLATION
The View from the Field
In June 1958 I was posted in a Battalion of Engineers based just outside the city of Thessalonica. I had just finished the Army Technical Services Reserve Officers School in Patras. My specific assignment was with the mechanical repairs unit where I was second in command under captain B. B had joined the Army as a private in the 1920s and he had risen through the ranks. He was a nice person with a lot of folk wisdom and we got along very well.
The Greek Army had been the recipient of large amounts of American Army equipment (most of it World War II surplus). However, the donations were in an awful state of repair, mainly because the Greek soldiers had little familiarity with machinery. To make matters worse, postings in the repair unit were sought after and several of the “technicians” were from rural areas. They had been assigned to the technical services though favoritism. On the other hand there were men who had been mechanics in the Greek Merchant Marine but because they had delayed their enlistment, they were assigned to digging ditches. Fortunately, the battalion commander let me look for such people amongst the troops and transfer them to the repair unit. After all this meant that the equipment of the battalion will be in better working order.
It turns out that the High Command of the Technical Services had its own ideas on how to improve the maintenance of the equipment. The idea was to translate the American Technical Manuals into Greek and distribute them to the technician soldiers. Our unit had indeed copies of some but they were kept under lock and key. Why? The manuals were written in the official Greek language that was quite different from the common language spoken by the soldiers. Furthermore most of the soldiers were barely literate so books were not the way to train them. I tried to read some of the manuals and I found them so poorly written that it was hard to find in them any information that could be used.
Because the repair unit was responsible for the books, we did not want any to be lost, thus the safekeeping. When an inspector was expected, the books would be taken out and distributed to the soldiers. It was my job to match the books to the equipment a soldier was repairing. We did not want the inspector to see someone working on a Jeep to have a manual for a 2-ton truck. (We used to joke that I had also to make sure that the books were held right side up.) Another part of the preparation for the inspection was to pour some machine oil on the floor and throw the manuals down so they would be dirtied and appear used.
One day I received through official mail a copy of an American Technical Manual and I was asked to translate it. Apparently, some one had noticed in my records that I was proficient in English and they thought I could do the task. I had quite a busy schedule in the repair unit and I did not want to devote my few free hours to an Army task, but I managed to translate a chapter and sent it back. A few months later I received a notice that I was transferred to the Technical Services Translation Office in the Army Headquarters in Athens. The transfer to Athens was highly desirable and it seemed an appropriate reward for my translating efforts.
The View from the Top
In April 1959 I reported to my new post. However, I was not going to be a translator, but a technical editor supervising other translators. The head of the office was a major, an easygoing type who did not seem to take things too seriously. The translators were civilians, most of them young women who had some knowledge of English but no technical background whatsoever. I was supposed to take what they had written and make sure it was technically correct. It was an impossible task but now I understood why the manuals we had were so poorly written. There was a joke going around that the section that each manual had on destroying the equipment (so it would not fall intact into the hands of the enemy) did not have to be translated. Maintaining the equipment according to the earlier sections was certain to destroy it.
The head of the Translation Office reported to a colonel who, in contrast to the major, was all fire and thunder. It was my luck that the colonel would bypass the major and deal directly with me. He assigned to me an additional duty: to go to the Army Printing Plant to approved the galley proofs before the manuals were put into production. To travel to the Printing Plant from the Headquarters I would ride on the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by a messenger soldier. I often wondered what “important mission” people would think I was on as we made our way through the city traffic.
It turn out that the printing plant duty was a plum. Knowing that no one was going to read the manuals, I was quick to approve their printing and that made me popular with the staff (all civilians). They told me that after I had finished I could go home, and if the colonel called they would cover my absence.
I should have left things alone but one day an American officer came to the translation office and, in my minimal conversational English, I explained that the manuals were translated using the official Greek idiom rather the spoken language. He knew the difference between the top idioms and he was horrified. Apparently he spoke to the colonel who, the next day, thundered to me: “What right you have to tell the American that we use the official language. I told him you were crazy and did not know what you were talking about!”
From then on, he would call me the first thing in the morning and told me to go to the printing office. He would shout “Are you still here?” At first I thought he was anxious to push the production of the manuals but later I realized that he wanted me out of the Headquarters so I would not provide any more “leaks” to the Americans. Since the Printing Office duty was light, my “mischief” turned out to my advantage. I am sure the colonel wrote a poor evaluation for me but since I was anxious to leave the army, it did not matter. I finished my two-year enlistment period and I was discharged in late September 1959.
Anytime I read in the newspapers about American efforts to organize the army of some country my Greek Army experience comes to mind. I wonder if the Iraqi army manuals are in classical Arabic. After all both Iraq and Greece used to be part of the Ottoman Empire so the concept of an official language incomprehensible by the plebeians should be equally familiar to both.
Labels: army memoirs, Greece, technical translations
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Real Trouble with Greece
Labels: Bailout, Byzantine Empire, Eurozone, Greece
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Macedonia at 1907 and Iraq at 2007
By the end of the 19th century it was clear that the Ottoman empire was crumbling and a fight for the spoils started. Bands of Greek and Bulgarian "insurgents" started attacking the Ottomans and, mostly, each other. Six European powers (England, France, the then Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia, Germany, and Italy) decided to intervene and stop the mayhem and they did so by diving Macedonia into six zones with each country undertaking the modernization of the Ottoman police in its zone. Of course, their motives were not purely humanitarian. They were also looking to grab pieces of the disintegrating Ottoman empire.
You see now the similarities (as well as some differences) with the current situation in Iraq. A strong ruler has disappeared (Saddam suddenly in Iraq, the strong Ottoman rule has gradually weakened). There are two ethnic/religious groups fighting each other (Sunni and Shia in Iraq, Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia) and those who try to control the situation (The U.S. and its allies in Iraq, the Ottoman rulers in Macedonia). The West tries to calm things down by organizing a local security force (Iraqi police and army, the Ottoman police in Macedonia). In contrast to Iraq, there were no fighting Western forces. The Ottoman forces played the role of an occupying army (as far as the Greeks and Bulgarians were concerned) but they were also protecting the local Muslim population.
What happened next? In Macedonia there were the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. The countries of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro allied against the Ottomans and were able to defeat their armies and take over Macedonia and other European Ottoman parts. Then the Greece and Serbia united to fight the Bulgarians in the division of the spoils. The Bulgarians lost, so the Greeks and the Serbians divided Macedonia amongst themselves. But things did not stay quite for a long time. In both World Wars (1914-1919 and 1939-1945) Serbia (later Yugoslavia) and Greece were allies of the British and French while Bulgaria was an ally of Germany. After WW-II Yugoslavia and Bulgaria came under Soviet control while Greece stayed outside the iron curtain. However Greece was torn by a civil war between "nationalists" and communists. The former were supported by Britain and the United States. The latter by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Bulgarian speaking inhabitents of Greek Macedonia came readily under suspicion as being pro-communists. Many of the young Greece leftists were quite fanatic, "eager to give their life for the glory of the party." (Does this remind anyone of al-Qaeda?)
From roughly 1890 to around 1950 friction between Greece and Bulgaria persistent with regular bloody flare-ups. Even during the "peaceful" 20 years between WW-I and WW-II there were "border incidents".
What does the history of Macedonia imply about Iraq? If you accept the analogy, it may take over 50 years for peace. Are Americans willing to stay there that long? For 25 years? For 10 years? Splitting Iraq into three countries may be the least painful option, horrible as it might be initself. After all this is what happended in Macedonia.
Labels: Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq, Macedonia
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Greeks and Kemal Ataturk
I have been away from my blog for over six months, in part because of health reasons and in part because the Middle East situation is so bad that I could not think of anything hopeful to say. One day, while surfing, the web I noticed that the Greek-Turkish disputes had spilled over cyberspace and I may have something to say in that area.
The truth is that there are more things that unite Greeks and Turks than things that divide them. I know many (though not all) Greeks and Turks share that view so good relations between Greeks and Turks is a more realistic goal than peace elsewhere in the Middle East. I hope this blog will compensate to some degree the blogs where some Greeks and Turks hurl insults to each other.
I should add that I was born in Greece but both of my parents were born in Turkey and left that country in the 1920's as a result of a brutal "population exchange." Two relatively recent books deal with that exchange in a way that fits with the oral history I have heard from my parents and other relatives. They are
- Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger, 2006 and
- Louis de Bernieres, Birds without Wings, 2004.
The first is history, the second a historical novel. The key issue is that "Greeks" (Ottoman Christians) and "Turks" (Ottoman Muslims) in Asia Minor lived together in peace and had generally good relations until WW-I. In 1919 the Greek Army was encouraged by the British to invade Ottoman lands and that started a chain of catastrophic events. It is customary for some Greeks to demonize Kemal Ataturk who led the resistance to the Greek Army thinking that if he did not exist they would have been able to re-establish the Byzantine Empire.
Let us imagine for a moment that Kemal not did exist and the Greek army was able to hold parts of Asia Minor while the Italians and the French held other parts. What next? Most of the people of Asia Minor were Turkish speaking Muslims. There would have enormous local resistance against what would have been in effect colonial regimes. (It is important to remember that most of the atrocities against Greeks and other Christians during the 1919-1922 war were not committed by the regular Turkish army but by irregulars, the "tsetes". So the absence of Kemal would have done little to diminish the carnage.) The example of nearby countries that used to be part of the Ottoman empire and fell under colonial rule tells what it might have happen. Turkey would have been another Iraq or Syria or Lebanon. A horrendous mess much closer to Europe than these other countries. Not the outcome some Greeks imagined.
Kemal Ataturk was a truly great man, a talented military leader, a gifted political leader, and a thinker. For a winning general he showed remarkable restrain when, in spite of advice from his generals, he refused to invade Western Thrace (he could have done easily so [1] ) or Syria . He had his eye in the long term. Like many a genius he had his flaws that unfortunately led to his rather early death (he was only 57) in 1938, a loss not only for Turkey, but also for the countries around it The history of his life can be found in several books, including the two I listed above [1, 2] but I want to include three of the more remarkable stories about him. (1) When he entered Smyrna in 1922 some people had laid down a Greek flag and asked him to step on it. He refused to do so, he did not want to insult the enemy; (2) In October 1930 he invited his former enemy Venizelos to Turkey where he treated him warmly (the streets of Ankara were decked with Greek flags). They even discussed the possibility of a partnership or federation between the two countries ([1], p. 201) (3) Years later when he introduced the Roman alphabet to replace the Arabic, he went himself to classrooms to teach it sending a powerful message to all government officials that lack of teachers was not going to be an excuse for not following the reform.
Greece is much better off today with the modern Turkey created by Kemal Ataturk as a neighbor than any other realistic alternative.
