Respond in Al Jazeera: Intervention leads BBC News to correct egregious mistranslation
On Saturday, November 25, a clip posted by BBC News showed a released Palestinian prisoner describing horrific abuses inside an Israeli prison. She said, in Arabic, that Israel held them in the cold without electricity, "sprayed us with pepper spray" and “left us to die."
BBC translated her testimony to: “No one helped us. Only Hamas cared. ... We love them very much."
As soon as we identified this egregious mistranslation had been published, our team called it out in a post where we highlighted the correct translation by our Arabic translators. This post went viral, garnering over 12 million total views to date.
As a result of our watchdog work, BBC News corrected its error in an updated video that now includes more of the interviewee’s Arabic testimony and accurate English subtitles.
Subsequently, Ayah Najadat, our Arabic team lead who led the effort to correct BBC’s unacceptable mistranslation, was featured in multiple news outlets to talk about language violence and injustice, including Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera English.
We're glad this dangerous error was eventually corrected – but errors like these shouldn't happen to begin with.
Mistranslations such as these are exacerbating the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We’ve previously discussed the systemic mistranslation of commonly-used Arabic words and movement terminology.
We're fighting for a reality in which mistranslation, misrepresentation, and language errors are avoided altogether. This is a reality in which qualified system-impacted translators and interpreters are centered, platformed, and afforded dignified wages.
As Israel restarts its bombardment on Gaza, the use (and misuse) of language in global media is again of the highest stakes.
You can help support the tireless efforts of our Arabic translators who are working around the clock to combat this language violence:
Press inquiries: media@respondcrisistranslation.org
