Guardian, so leftist perspective.n over three decades of animosity between Iran and its archenemy, the US, so much has been lost in translation.
Iran’s former president, the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, once caused a great deal of outrage in the US over comments that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, a phrase that became subject of much controversy.
No one doubted that Ahmadinejad, a notorious Holocaust denier, often used anti-semitic rhetoric, but analysts argued he hadn’t threatened the military annihilation of Israel. His words were not accurately translated by his own state news agency. What he rather meant, they said, was that Israel will collapse over time; it was a prediction, not a call for war.
Today, with nuclear negotiations producing promising outcomes, Iran-US relations have significantly improved and efforts by both sides to overcome the language barrier have had interesting results.
Iran has a US-educated, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is in New York this week. He communicates with the American people directly through his Twitter account, newspaper articles, many television interviews and public roundtables, including one at New America on Wednesday. Here is an Iranian minister who can articulately communicate with Americans for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. In fact, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, has by now spent more time with Zarif than any other foreign minister. They call each other John and Javad.
The longstanding taboo in the Islamic Republic against talking directly with American officials is history. In fact, not since the revolution have Tehran and Washington had such a good understanding of each other’s positions and values.
That is partly thanks to an American diplomat who communicates directly with the people of Iran. Alan Eyre, the US State Department’s Persian language spokesperson, enjoys near-celebrity status in Iran due to his impressive knowledge of Iranian literature.
Eyre, who speaks formal Farsi, often flavours his responses with a handful of ancient Persian expressions and a line of poetry to get his message across. That resonates with many in Iran.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/29/obama-iran-persian-language-spokesman-alan-eyre
