The Art of "Quotemanship" and "Misquotemanship" | Quoting people accurately is really hard — and you can quote me on that.

by Frank Herron
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Sacking of Soccer Coach in South Africa Dredges Up an Embarrassing “Misquote” Claim

A column by soccer-writer Mninawa Ntloko of South Africa’s Business Day deals with the recent firing of Vladimir Vermezovic (right), coach of the South African Premier Soccer League’s Kaizer Chiefs. The article, published on 18 April, chronicles a stormy relationship the coach had with the media and others. Ntloko recalled the time when the coach stormed out of a press conference in Johannesburg in October of 2010. The volatile Vlad appeared to be on the verge of impaling the journalists because he was upset that he had been “misquoted” by the Daily Sun. The paper had printed an article in which the coach criticized the play of one of his star players–Kaizer Motaung Jr., whose father is executive chairman of the team.
It turns out that the reporter from the paper had a tape recording of the interview, which exonerated the reporter and the Daily Sun. Later, the coach acknowledged that he had not read the article properly and was misinformed. He apologized to the Daily Sun–“and only the Daily Sun“–two days after his outburst. The apology ruffled the feathers of the soccer scribes. They were miffed that he did not apologize to the entire group. The reporters then tried to give him the silent treatment.
A few days later, he apologized more generally. Here’s what he said during that apology/explanation, as presented as, I guess, only a Serbian can–according to a 21 October 2010 posting by www.kickoff.com:

“I said what I said [at the village in Naturena]. I was emotional and coming from Serbia, sometimes from that we think with the balls not the brain. My English is not so perfect and I was in trouble.
“I would like this opportunity to apologise to everybody. During my time here I have had a good relationship with the media and we can continue in that way.”

The balls/brain distinction is classic. But now the relationship is over.

by Frank Herron
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Ask the Actress: Was It Blasphemy or a Misquote or a Purely Honest Spur-of-the-Moment Statement from the Heart??

Actress Kamna Jethmalani might have used an inappropriate term of endearment for Lord Venkateswara (a form of the Hindu god Vishnu).
Now she is playing both the “misquote” and “out of context” card in her attempts to distance herself from her statement, according to an article in the Deccan Chronicle of 13 April.
She was widely quoted as calling Venkateswara her “boyfriend” after she attended a darshan at Tirumala Hills. Her explanation:

“I was misquoted and my off-the-cuff remark was presented out of contxt. I said that God was like a friend, father and brother to me, but the media blew the friend quote out of proportion.”

The online version of
the article in the Deccan Chronicle of 13 April includes a comment from a fellow actress, Shraddha Das. She was there, evidently. She says, ‘lighten up’, or, more precisely:

“I was with Kamna during the darshan in Tirupati. She becomes a completely different person whenever she visits the temple. She was very elated there. The word ‘boyfriend’ was a slip of the tongue. She meant it as a friendly gesture.”

by Frank Herron
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Going Toe to Toe with Mike Tyson, Any Journalist Will Want to Get the Quote Right

Earlier this week in the Guardian, writer John Crace (right) interviewed boxer Mike Tyson (above) for the Guardian newspaper.
The interview was published this week (10 April) and was headlined “Mike Tyson: ‘Why are you asking me about pigeons?'” Crace found that he was lucky to be well out of range of Tyson’s devastating reach. At one point, Tyson accused Crase of trying to misquote him.
Here’s the exchange:

Crace: Your show in Las Vegas is called Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth. What undisputed truths are we going to learn that we don’t already know?
Tyson: You’re going to have to come to the show to find out.
Crace: Umm … but can you just give me a flavour?
Tyson: When I was in prison, I got one of the [the telephone connection isn’t that good and Tyson isn’t talking that distinctly and what Crace hears is…] wardens pregnant.
Crace: What? You got one of the wardens pregnant?
Tyson: That’s not what I said, John. You’re trying to misquote me.
Crace: I’m seriously not. I want to make sure that I heard you accurately. If I got it wrong then I want to correct it.
Tyson: OK. What I said was that I got one of the counsellors pregnant. There’s a big difference.

He’s right. There is a big difference. Anyway, Crace did a good job of “reflective listening” right on the spot. Crace could have plowed right ahead with the interview, assuming he had heard Tyson correctly (despite any poor diction or poor phone connection) and going with “warden” instead of “counsellor”. For what it’s worth to Crace, I give the interviewer high marks for speaking up and getting it right. He might have irked Tyson a bit, but imagine how “Iron” Mike might have felt if he had read [?!] that he had gotten a WARDEN pregnant. I’m sure Crace would like to keep BOTH of his ears far from Tyson.

by Frank Herron
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Sometimes a Misquote Is Priceless, or to a Certain Illinois Senator, Worth a Billion, Make that a Trillion Dollars

An editorial in the Chattanooga Times Free Press of 13 April 2012 refers to a classic comment attributed to longtime U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) (left).
Dirksen’s topic–the same as the editorial, titled “Deficit Talk About Real Money”–was irresponsible deficit spending by the federal government.
The editorial puts it this way:

One version of the oft-alleged quotation was: “A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Sen. Dirksen later explained: “Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fellow misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so great that I never bothered to deny it.”

I really appreciate the fact that the editorial writer did not mindlessly attribute that well-worn statement to Sen. Dirksen. Instead, they took the time to provide the senator’s comment about the quote.

by Frank Herron
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To Tape or Not to Tape? That Is the Question a Musician Asks

Musician Nthato Mokgata (who also goes by Spoek Mathambo) clearly laid out the often-unspoken unease that exists between interviewer and interviewee.The exchange between the singer and journalist Andrea Nagel is captured in the beginning of an article that appeared in the 13 April 2012 edition of The Times of South Africa. Mathambo asked that the interview be recorded; the interviewee apparently resisted the suggestion. Here’s how the exchange appeared in the paper:

Before we begin the interview he puts me in my place, insisting that I use a dictaphone.
“I’ve been misquoted by journalists so many times,” he says, exasperated by my insistence on taking notes.
“You’re probably misquoting me right now.”

Of course, in addition to buying ink by the barrel, journalist usually have the last word.
Nagel ended the piece with a bit of a dig at the singer and his concern about accurate quotations.

As I leave, Mathambo, who has loosened up since the start of our interview, offers to put my name on the guest list at his performance on Saturday night.
At least I think he invited me, but I wouldn’t want to misquote him.

I must say, I’d really like to know one thing. Despite apparently rejecting his request that she record the interview, did she plan on accepting the offer of a free pass and attend the concert?

by Frank Herron
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Love Might be Unconditional, But Leave the “IF” Where Hesse Flung It, Please

Misquotations pop up in the strangest places.
Today, I was at a stationery store (it was stationary, too, by the way) looking at anniversary cards. (Don’t tell my wife; I’d like to surprise her.)
There, I found two which each referred to the same Hermann Hesse quotation. However, the quotes did NOT MATCH.
The one on the top (at right) apparently captured the quote correctly, with the important IF at the beginning.
The other one (below, at right) snipped off the IF. The proper rendering (translated from Hesse’s novel Narziss und Goldmund) is:

If I know what love is, it is because of you. [Boldface added.]

Without the initial IF, problems arise. For one thing, this leaves two independent clauses with a dreaded “comma splice” between. But the real problem is bigger than that. Here’s an example of a lazy approach to quotations.
Oh, I almost forgot. There’s another problem. Both cards spelled his first name wrong, dropping the second -n. At least they were consistent!
Back to the quotation…..
I see from one Web site that Hesse’s quotation in German was:

Wenn ich trotzdem weiß, was Liebe ist, so ist es deinetwegen.

I ran it through Babylon and got this:

If I, what love is, nevertheless know, so it is as far as you are concerned.

Google handles the translation this way:

If I still know what love is, it is because of you.

Not bad! I like the “still”.
And the elusive “IF” is in both.

by Frank Herron
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Ozzie Might Have Been Tempted, But He Resisted Playing the “Misquote” Card

The April 12, 2012, edition of Hong Kong’s South China Post, I think, misrepresents what Ozzie Guillen said in the Tuesday press conference in Miami. In a promo on the main Sports page, the paper says that Guillen said the problem was a “misquote” (see above).
But I’m pretty sure he didn’t use that word. “Misinterpretation”? I don’t think he used that word either, but it works here. “Mistranslation”? That’s more like it–from his point of view. I don’t think he ever complained about a “misquote”.
The South China Post printed an Associated Press account of the press conference. The article correctly puts it this way:

Guillen took full responsibility for his comments, but said they were misinterpreted by Time‘s reporter.

The AP account notes that “Time said it stood by its story.” And that’s easy to do, I think, because the whole “misinterpretation” and “mistranslation” evidently happened within Mr. Guillen’s head. During the press conference, in Spanish, he blamed the problem he had with the Time story on his own inability in the interview with Time to say in English what he was thinking in Spanish. He put it this way,

“It was a personal mistake of the thing I had in my mind and what I said. What I wanted to say in Spanish, I said in English in a wrong way.”

Still, it’s a leap–from the “I love Fidel Castro” in English to the (paraphrase here) ‘I don’t love or admire Fidel Castro’ in Spanish.
In any case, the promo (above) should be worded differently. Too often, I think, people who are embarrassed by or criticized for a statement attributed to them, raise the “misquote” complaint too quickly and too often. This is NOT what Guillen has said happened to his words. He did not fall into the knee-jerk “I was misquoted” trap.

by Frank Herron
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Fishing Around: Was Something Lost in Translation?

Ozzie Guillen, baseball manager of the Florida Marlins, has finally said something that has generated massive blowback. He was suspended for five games and apologized in a long press conference on Tuesday (10 April), as summarized by Yahoo! At issue was something Guillen said.
The Yahoo! article quoted Guillen’s most relevant comment from the Time article (headlined “Big Fish”. Sorry. The link takes you only to the first paragraph, which is free.):

“I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that [expletive] is still here.”

Oh yeah. There was another quote from Guillen. The entire article began with a four-word quotation from him. The opener: “I love Fidel Castro.”

He spent much of the press conference back-pedaling from the remarks due to the firestorm he sparked among Fidel-Loathing Cuban Americans in Miami. I appreciate that Guillen put the brakes on before coming out and claiming that Time’s Sean Gregory misquoted him.
The problem, the coach said, was translation. Here’s what he said, according to HuffingtonPost.com:

“In the translation from Spanish to English you lose a lot. I don’t want to make any excuses, but what I wanted to say is that I was surprised that Castro had been in power for so long, after hurting so many people. But something was lost in the translation from Spanish to English.”

He said this in Spanish. HuffPo translated it into English. Translation is always tricky. It’s still unclear how he got so quickly from “I love Fidel Castro” to, paraphrasing here, “I hate Fidel Castro.”
Would love to find out what he actually said–in Spanish, I presume–to the Time writer.

by Frank Herron
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Do Law-Making, Sausage-Making and Quote-Making Have Something in Common?

An editorial in The Guardian out of Great Britain today (10 April 2012) again brings 19th century German leader Otto von Bismarck into the mix regarding a widely used statement that links (ha, ha) sausages and laws. The editorial opens this way:

“Bismarck never likened law-making to sausage manufacture, but the misquote is remembered because so many legislators act as if their craft is best carried out away from public view.”

Really. So, you KNOW Bismarck never said it. So why bring his name into the sausage-government mix here? Snow White never said it, either, for goodness sake. Should she be mentioned? I guess the Bismarck reference is just too tempting. The problem is not a “misquote” as the editorial says; rather, it’s a “misattribution.” The reference is there because many people THINK Bismarck said something along the lines of,

“To retain respect for laws and sausages, one must not watch them in the making.”
(That version is in Fred Shapiro’s The Yale Book of Quotations.)

Mr. Shapiro, like others, cites a use from 1869 that puts the sentiment in the mouth of the much-less-known John Godfrey Saxe, who is quoted as saying “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”
Well, I think sometimes “quotations” can be added to the laws and sausages because they too can “cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” Granted, no quotation was poorly made in this example, but the illustration here adds to the discussion of how historically “famous” quotes can be mishandled or misrepresented.
The sausage-law connection makes a perfectly good point. We don’t need to drag Bismarck’s name along with it, when it’s well established that the chances he coined the phrase are very low.

by Frank Herron
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Blast from the Past: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is…a Misquote

Nearly two years ago, Neil Boyd, professor and associate director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, concluded that Canadians had apparently hit the canvas and were down for the count because of their growing attraction to blood-filled Ultimate Fighting Competition. To make his case, in an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sunon May 17, 2010, he compared ticket prices for seats in the first five rows at various auditoriums for various events. At the GM Place, prices for these premiere seats were $500 for a Simon and Garfunkel concert; $950 for the Eagles; and $800 for Michael Buble. Similarly up-close seats commanded $700 for Sting at the Chan Centre and $400 for Yo-Yo Ma at the Orpheum. With those prices in mind, Mr. Boyd then went in for the kill. He contrasted those prices with the $1,500 per seat ticket price for an upcoming Ultimate Fighting Competition bout. In closing, he asked:

How far removed are we from the days of blood sport as entertainment — lions and gladiators at the Roman Coliseum? Not very far, if at all. The market confirms Pogo’s aphorism: We have seen the enemy and they is us.

His points in the article are well taken, but I was puzzled that he chose not to somehow work a rough-and-tumble NHL hockey game into his price mix. In any case, he tarnishes it all with a mishandling of the Pogo quote. [I know. He doesn’t use quotation marks, making it a paraphrase, but even so, it wasn’t necessary to get it wrong.] His blunder was pointed out by letter-writer Frank M. Archer of Deltatwo days after the publication of the opinion piece. Archer wondered:

How can we trust the accuracy of what Neil Boyd states in his commentary when he mangles Pogo Possum’s famous phrase “We have met the enemy and he is us?”

Then it gets personal:

Shame on you, Neil, for wasting your time reading criminology books when you were a kid, when you should have been reading the comics instead.

I know this is an old example, but it’s still valid, I think. It illustrates a couple of things. First, don’t mess with Pogo. First, the handling of words can reinforce or undermine the credibility of the writer, especially if the words are widely known. Second, and most importantly, don’t mess with Pogo.