Camelopard
6th September 2007, 13:05
A former Australian career diplomat Richard Woolcott has written a book which looks like it could be a good read judging by some exceprts printed today:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/foreign-affairs-to-remember/2007/08/31/1188067364692.html
DID you hear about the prime minister who had a meal specifically devised for his visit aboard a warship, only to have his nose rubbed in it? On a 1973 South Pacific Forum visit to Western Samoa, the inebriated navy cook advised the PM of his plans for chicken Whitlam. "It's like your party," said the cook. "It's made up of left wings and bums."
According to Richard Woolcott, the career diplomat accompanying Whitlam, the PM roared with laughter, but the navy hierarchy didn't see the funny side.
Then there was the 1962 party hosted by Australia's United Nations delegation at the St Carlos Hotel in New York.
It involved an impromptu cricket match, a punch-up including a Queensland senator, and the misadventures of two Finnish diplomats who chivalrously, but while intoxicated, attempted to "rescue" an attractive Australian woman diplomat pursued by an unwanted suitor.
To free their heroine, the Finns attempted to travel along an exterior ledge, but slipped — the fall of the first broken by the awning of the Black Angus Steak House two floors below; the other crashing through.
Woolcott knew the pitfalls of translation, particularly of idiom. He noted the discomfort of Japanese parliamentarians when Bob Hawke (a former Prime Minister) told the Diet: "I am not here to play funny buggers with you." It had been translated as, "I am not here to play laughing homosexuals with you."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/foreign-affairs-to-remember/2007/08/31/1188067364692.html
DID you hear about the prime minister who had a meal specifically devised for his visit aboard a warship, only to have his nose rubbed in it? On a 1973 South Pacific Forum visit to Western Samoa, the inebriated navy cook advised the PM of his plans for chicken Whitlam. "It's like your party," said the cook. "It's made up of left wings and bums."
According to Richard Woolcott, the career diplomat accompanying Whitlam, the PM roared with laughter, but the navy hierarchy didn't see the funny side.
Then there was the 1962 party hosted by Australia's United Nations delegation at the St Carlos Hotel in New York.
It involved an impromptu cricket match, a punch-up including a Queensland senator, and the misadventures of two Finnish diplomats who chivalrously, but while intoxicated, attempted to "rescue" an attractive Australian woman diplomat pursued by an unwanted suitor.
To free their heroine, the Finns attempted to travel along an exterior ledge, but slipped — the fall of the first broken by the awning of the Black Angus Steak House two floors below; the other crashing through.
Woolcott knew the pitfalls of translation, particularly of idiom. He noted the discomfort of Japanese parliamentarians when Bob Hawke (a former Prime Minister) told the Diet: "I am not here to play funny buggers with you." It had been translated as, "I am not here to play laughing homosexuals with you."