Lost in translation

China's President Ends U.S. Visit With Yale Speech

John O'Neil in The Times: President Hu Jintao concluded his first trip to the United States with a speech today at Yale University aimed at reassuring Americans about his country's rise. But he made clear that China would remain "focused wholeheartedly" on economic growth and would move only "prudently" to expand political rights. ...

Speaking before an invited audience of about 600 students, faculty and administrators — a sizable portion of whom seemed to understand Mr. Hu's jokes before they were translated — Mr. Hu stressed repeatedly that China remained a poor country despite its rapid economic progress.

Mr. Hu is speaking at President Bush's alma mater, and when Mr. Bush traveled to China earlier this year he spoke at Mr. Hu's alma mater, Tsinghua University. Today, the Chinese represent the largest group of foreign students at Yale, accounting for more than 300 of Yale's 11,000 students. More than 300 undergraduates are taking Chinese language courses, with many more participating in Yale's 80 academic collaborations and exchanges with Chinese universities.

Wow, at a university of thousands, hundreds are taking Chinese--good thing in our world of billions there are billions of Chinese.

Apparently those hundreds don't include the reporters at the Times covering China. Could you imagine if the Times' Paris correspondent didn't speak French?

Then again, whatever problems American reporters have covering China pale besides those the Bush administration faces in dealing with the awakened, and touchy, dragon.

Josph Kahn in the Times: President Bush and China's president, Hu Jintao, pledged to cooperate more closely on fighting nuclear proliferation and reducing trade imbalances on Thursday, but broke no new ground on the most delicate issues that divide the two nations.

Mr. Hu's address was interrupted by a protester, Wenyi Wang, who shouted, "President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong!" The meeting, the first at the White House between the men since Mr. Hu became China's top leader in 2002, was plagued by gaffes that upended months of painstaking diplomacy over protocol and staging. ...

The occasion was disrupted when a member of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, accredited as a reporter for a sect-run publication to cover the ceremony at the White House, interrupted Mr. Hu's address and upset the elaborate choreography the Chinese delegation had regarded as the most important trophy of Mr. Hu's visit. Screaming, "President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," the ethnic Chinese woman, Wenyi Wang, partly drowned out Mr. Hu. She continued shouting for more than a minute before security officers removed her.

Mr. Bush later apologized to Mr. Hu for the incident, White House officials said. But Chinese Foreign Ministry officials traveling with Mr. Hu canceled an afternoon briefing. One delegation member, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly, described his superiors as outraged by the breach.

Compounding the gaffe, a White House announcer introducing the national anthems at the same ceremony mistakenly referred to China as the Republic of China, which is the formal name of its archrival, Taiwan. Mainland China is the People's Republic of China. China treats American support for Taiwan, a separately governed island that China claims as its sovereign territory, as the biggest irritant in bilateral relations. Even minuscule changes in the wording of diplomatic statements on the subject are often viewed as transformative on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

As a sidenote, when the heckling occurred the Times quickly put up an article by its staff that quoted what the heckler said in English, followed by a sentence saying the heckler also said something in Chinese. The Post ran an article by its staff that included an Asian American, and that had a translation of what the heckler said.

What a concept, covering a country with reporters that speak the language!

Photo of Chinese President Hu Jintao at Yale by C.J. Gunther/European Pressphoto Agency.