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Article published In: Babel
Vol. 69:6 (2023) ► pp.725–748

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First Secretary Gierek, President Carter, and the president’s Polish interpreter

An analysis of an awkward diplomatic encounter based on new archival evidence

 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Published online: 5 October 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00344.che
Abstract
During President Carter’s visit to Warsaw in 1977, his interpreter into Polish, Steven Seymour, allegedly made major mistakes. American journalists learned of these mistakes from their Polish colleagues and gloated over what they considered erotic overtones in Seymour’s interpretation. There is much literature on this episode, but no author has yet consulted the actual interpretation. I was able to obtain an archived audio recording of the entire episode from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. In this article, I discuss Seymour’s choice of a sentence-by-sentence mode of interpretation and the problems inherent in that mode, classify his errors and inaccuracies, and attempt to uncover the reasons for the exaggerated criticism from the media and the interpreting community. Characteristically, the media paid no attention to the solemn, confident performance of Seymour’s Polish colleague, who interpreted Edward Gierek’s speech into English. The episode is a good testimony to the role of diplomatic interpreters, whose moment of glory only comes when they make a factual or imaginary mistake.
Résumé
Lors de la visite du président Carter à Varsovie en 1977, son interprète en polonais, Steven Seymour, aurait commis des erreurs affreuses. Des journalistes américains ont appris ces erreurs de leurs collègues polonais et ont jubilé devant ce qu’ils pensaient être des connotations érotiques dans l’interprétation de Seymour. Il existe une abondante littérature sur cet épisode, mais aucun auteur n’a encore consulté l’interprétation réelle. J’ai pu obtenir un enregistrement audio archivé de l’épisode entier auprès de la Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Dans cet article, je traite du choix de Seymour d’un mode d’interprétation phrase par phrase et des problèmes inhérents à ce mode, je classe ses erreurs et ses inexactitudes, et je tente de découvrir les raisons des critiques exagérées des médias et de la communauté des interprètes. De manière caractéristique, les médias n’ont pas prêté attention à la performance solennelle et confiante du collègue polonais de Seymour, qui a interprété en anglais le discours d’Edward Gierek. L’épisode témoigne bien du rôle des interprètes diplomatiques, qui n’ont leur moment de gloire que lorsqu’ils commettent une erreur factuelle ou imaginaire.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The two interpreters and their interpreting modes
    • 2.1The long consecutive mode
    • 2.2The sentence-by-sentence mode combined with sight translation
    • 2.3Seymour’s training and preparation
  • 3.Seymour’s version of Carter’s remarks
    • 3.1Numbers
    • 3.2Interferences from the source text
    • 3.3Interferences from Russian
    • 3.4Unfortunate lexical choices
  • 4.Reaction by the U.S. and Canadian press
  • 5.The Epilogue
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
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