UN Representative With Slow Translator Unsure What Everyone Is Applauding About

Story by Ben Plowman 

| Published Nov 3, 2009

Iranian representative to the UN, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, missed dozens of opportunities for polite applause and smiling this week, when his UN translator took practically forever translating a speech by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

“It was extremely embarrassing,” Ahmadinejad said. “I couldn’t clap in case they were denouncing my own country, but not clapping with everyone else made me feel so stupid and left out. It felt like every country in the general assembly was judging me.”

Ahmadinejad then spent most of the speech with his arms crossed, hoping the secretary general would hurry up so he could berate his incompetent translator. It took a full five minutes after Ban Ki-Moon stopped talking before the translator finally caught up, at which time Ahmadinejad was practically alone in the auditorium.

A number of translator-related problems have troubled the UN in recent years. Most prominent was right before a recent speech by Ahmadinejad, when translators were instructed to remind the audience of the free snacks available in the lobby, forcing nearly all of them to miss the Iranian president’s speech.