Who needs the translator?

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Last week, Trump had a lengthy and somewhat controversial conversation with Putin. According to this report, the reason that the call lasted so long was that Putin doesn’t speak English, so that translators were required. It’s a very ethno-centric way of looking at it. It could equally be said that the translators were required because Trump doesn’t speak Russian, an alternative perspective which seems to have completely gone over the heads of the Americans.

Besides, it isn’t even true. Putin speaks English fairly well, even if he prefers not to do so when involved in negotiations and discussions, to the extent of having been observed correcting the translators on previous occasions. He’s also very fluent in German, giving him at least three languages, compared to Trump’s one. And listening to Trump speak on occasions, there are surely grounds for wondering whether he can legitimately claim to speak even one language fluently. Even if Putin were content to use English in the discussion, translators might still be needed to make sense of some of Trump’s words (covfefe, anyone?) let alone his mangled and rambling sentences.

It reveals a lot about American attitudes that the man who speaks three languages reasonably well is regarded as the problem requiring a translator, whilst the man who struggles to make sense in one is regarded as the norm.