European Central Bank President Lost in Translation

Reuters.com yesterday featured an article by Krista Hughes on the rich language of European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.

"Quotations from German poets, Latin phrases and French idioms pepper [his] language" which "on occasions [...] can make his monthly news conferences on interest rates as much an exercise in linguistic guesswork as a window on the thinking of the world's number two central bank," she writes.

Unlike other central or federal banks the ECB has to communicate in all of the official languages of the European Union. According to internal research, the ECB manages this complex task and, despite the linguistic hurdles, gets its message across successfully.

Yet, "some ECB watchers, linguists and communication experts say there are hazards in deciphering Trichet, especially in a multilingual environment ... [where the] ECB faces extra hurdles when using key phrases to signal its plans, a common central banking weapon. Things can misfire in translation, and Trichet's circumlocutions and sometimes unusual syntax can make even native English speakers reach for the dictionary."

Read this entertaining article at Reuters.com