The BBC have altered another speech

[TheFilliesWillRiseAgain]

BBC Persia translated the US defence secretary's speech from English to their Iranian audience.

He said the Iranian regime is experiencing death.

They said he said the Iranian people is experiencing death.

It was only when viewers called it out that they deleted the translation and apologised, saying it was a mistake.

Why does this keep happening?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/06/bbc-altered-hegseth-speech-on-iran-war/

Public institutions have lost the principle of being neutral. In fact they have gone the other way and politically left staff who work there seem to think they are being justice warriors by using their position to further their own politics.

I recently attended a work event in Wales and the representative from the Welsh Government openly paraded her progressive left politics and how she was conducting her work through this.

It’s a disgrace.

The article literally says they made a mistake while translating. Having done a lot of translation myself I can see it would be easy to say people instead of regime.

Unless there's more to it this is a mountain out of a molehill.

Well greens are pro Palestinian - not sure what that is going to mean -many more i
migrants? I worry for British jews

What's this about the greens got to do with the Op?

Not sure what the greens or their stance on Palestine have got to do with this speech on Iran.

But if we’re talking about political parties, and their stance on issue that may affect immigration, Reform are pro the UK intervening in Iran. Iranians were the largest proportion of people coming over on small boats last year, and I can’t imagine a significant war with an unknown outcome (but probably not safe and fair democracy) will help that.

It's a massive mistake (mixing up the government with the people) that anyone translating during a war should not be making. Why do these mistakes always seem to go in the same direction?

There will always be errors in translation but we won't hear about the vast majority.

As mistakes go it’s a pretty bad one.

I have a habit of mangling things when I have to translate between two languages at home but I don't work for a national broadcaster, I know my work won't be broadcast to the world and if context is really important (e.g. writing a letter to officials) I run my effort past a handy native language speaker....

What is the other direction for such mistakes to go ?

Sorry but that is nonsense.

Two members of my family work as translators for a large NGO. They have a revision process in place precisely to avoid things like this. Because it matters.

Live interpretation is obviously a bit different, but with translation, you need to be much more exact.

To be clear, when I said a rep of the Welsh Government I mean a civil servant. The civil service is meant to be politically neutral.

I think the Telegraph is over-egging it. Not surprising:

The BBC, which carried Mr Hegseth’s Pentagon address live on Monday, translated the word “regime” as “mardom”, the Persian word for “people”. It later issued a correction.

The error drew condemnation from Iranians online, who accused the BBC of conflating ordinary civilians with the brutality of the regime and altering the meaning of Mr Hegseth’s speech. Others disagreed, saying the translation was acceptable.

Well, as the mistakes are always favouring a certain position of the left/ disparaging the right, I am sure you can work out what the other direction mistakes could go in ( but aren’t).

No, I can't work it out. What is the "other direction" such mistake could go ? Can you give a hypothetical example ?

The reality is that Hegseth mis-spoke he said regime when he meant people. To rephrase an old line "Hey,hey DJT how many kids have you killed today".

Using the right word for people or regime in a state address is pretty much up there with get it right territory.

And do they never make mistakes? I suspect they're not telling you the truth if they have really said that!

Nothing to do with it being reported in a right wing paper then? I'm sure they would always report on mistakes going in "the other direction" as you put it. 🤔

Iranian people are certainly being killed whatever Hesketh said. A Freudian slip saying what's actually happening? Or a simple mis-translation?

Usually you can't translate word for word or it makes no sense and the grammar is screwed up. It's actually very difficult to translate so the meaning is correct and the audience can understand it easily. I don't know how words are used in Iranian or what the regime is called in Iranian compared to what the people are called or how closely one is associated with the other. It was formed in a revolution so theoretically the government is of/by the people.

I am not a linguist in any way, and I can agree with that.

A bit like if it was China being attacked, and he had said " we will kill all communists". Because technically, the CPC considers everyone in China to be a communist.

Agreed. The BBC will have staff who are fully fluent in both languages and should have some form of quality control in place to prevent this type of error, if it was in fact an error rather than a deliberate slant.

The fact that this keeps happening to high-ranking American officials points to bias on the BBC's part.

Is this not a bit moot anyway, given that BBC is blocked in Iran, and their internet is cut ?

Many people, especially Trump, seem to forget that people in Iran are not reading what Trump or anyone is saying. The country has State controlled media.

Ok, back this up by presenting the cases reported in left wing papers then.