The Donald isn’t known for mincing his words, but perhaps this time, his trademark straightforwardness might have done him not only political damage, but linguistic damage too…
The President of the United States, well-known New York business tycoon Donald Trump, has been in office for a while now and has been the subject of more international controversy than surely any post-war political figure.
From his remarks to his actions, people across America and indeed across the globe have bones to pick with The Donald, with his face and his latest shocking statement dominating the world press almost daily. One thing nobody can accuse Trump of, though, (yes, there is still something), is that he isn’t straightforward. In fact, he is perhaps much, much too straightforward.
He says what he thinks even if what he thinks is something that shouldn’t ever be uttered by anyone, let alone the leader of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, and very rarely does anyone struggle to understand what America’s leader was attempting to say or get across, it’s so clear as day it often offends many, that is, until his most recent, incredibly offensive statement was tackled by the Croatian media.
Trump recently infamously referred to certain countries as ”sh*tholes”. It certainly isn’t the nicest attribute to give to any place, but I’m not really sure why anyone is all that shocked anymore. The old saying goes ”you should listen not to what is said, but to who is saying it” – that couldn’t be more true, particularly in this instance.
As our wonderful Nikolina Demark highlighted recently, Croatian is a very colourful language when it comes to swearing, with some extremely bizarre slurs and insults that not only don’t make much sense when broken down in Croatian, but couldn’t be translated into English, or many other languages for that matter, even if you employed the best translator and linguist on earth to attempt it.
As Andrew Kirell quite rightly pointed out on the social media giant Twitter, sh*thole can be taken in a variety of ways, especially by our very own national media, right here in Croatia, who of course, decided the best translation for sh*thole should be the classic – vukojebina.
Mr. Trump, say what you’ve got to say if you absolutely must, but make it easier on the international media, as vukojebina has become even more talked about than your statement, at least over here.
Do you think Trump should take a leaf out of Croatia’s book and employ more bizarre names for places rather than simply insulting ones? Here’s a quick look at a few of our favourites. Not for the easily offended!
