[lbo-talk] BHL defends DSK

Wendy Lyon wendy.lyon at gmail.com
Wed May 18 23:01:13 PDT 2011


On 18 May 2011 22:22, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> I never thought I would say anything that could be (mis)interpreted as
> defending the execrable BHL, but the quoted word "pretends" is clearly a
> mistranslation. The verb *prétendre* can mean *pretend* in English only in
> the sense "pretend to the throne of ..." ("Bonnie Prince Charlie was known
> as the Young Pretender to the British throne"), meaning one who claims.  The
> proper translation here is "claims to have been the victim..." which has no
> implications whatever as to the validity of her claim, while "pretends"
> implies she is lying.

I thought that one particular word might have been mistranslated, but changing it doesn't really change the tone of the paragraph. The clear insinuation is still that she *is* lying, especially in the first clause:

"I hold it against all those who complacently accept the account of this other young woman, this one French, who claims to have been the victim of the same kind of attempted rape, who has shut up for eight years but, sensing the golden opportunity, whips out her old dossier and comes to flog it on television."

The meaning of that word might make a difference in terms of whether the statement is libellous, but it hardly makes it any less repugnant. And French libel law in general being much more plaintiff-friendly than US (the burden of proving truth, for thing, falls on the defendant - which is kind of ironic in view of some of the rest of his rant) I'm not sure it actually even makes a difference as to whether it's libellous, although someone else probably knows more about that than I do.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list