more washington post fun time

[fox]

yesterday's ombudsman column included a bit where a reader wrote in to say it's Just Wrong that the post doesn't customarily transliterate the 'al' (or 'el') part of Arabic surnames -- and she brought it to the attention of the news division and they're revisiting the issue and making some changes.  go, reader!

so i wrote to her about the general problem i've been having with photo captions for several months.  i mean, facts are facts, aren't they?, and relating them wrong is relating them wrong, whether the text is an article or accompanying a photograph.  wales isn't in england, rachel weisz wasn't in the english patient, and there's no such goddamn thing as a 'parashooter'.  if you can't get the ombudsman on your side with the idea that it's important for a well-respected newspaper not to look illiterate, then whom can you get on your side?

... in any event, that felt good, too.  :-)

also, GIP.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the Post story, but surely a murdering maniac like Zawahiri, for instance, should NOT be getting his honorary "el"?

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

i don't speak or read or have any familiarity with arabic, but i believe it is customary for newspapers of a certain caliber (or even calibre) to refer to everyone by their ordinary honorifics, particularly in the news pages, where they aren't supposed to be editorializing. i'm sure the new york times referred to the german chancellor as "mr. hitler", for example, and i'm going to pre-emptively state that this is not a godwin's-law situation. :-)

anyway, here's what the column says:

Post readers help bring needed changes to the paper. Reader and former Post reporter Tom Lippman complained two months ago that The Post's style for rendering Arabic names is inaccurate.

When an Arab name is transliterated from the Arabic alphabet (there is no single approved method to do that), The Post does not use the article "el" or "al" before a name, as is common in the Arab world. Lippman, a former Post stylebook editor, said: "We would never refer to Delaware's former governor as Pete Pont without the 'du' or the great German conductor Herbert Karajan without the 'von.' So why does The Post do this only to Arabs? I have tilted at this windmill for more than 20 years, but your arrival brings the opportunity to raise the issue anew."

The copy desk chiefs and the Foreign Desk looked at the issue again and decided last week to begin adding the article to Arabic names when it can be determined accurately and if the person being identified prefers it. This will take effect in a week or two.

(i'd totally forgotten that the correspondent referred to tilting at windmills, by the way. must have been shoved back somewhere in my subconscious. i should share my new icon with him!)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

if the person being identified prefers it

Hahahahahaha! Natch, the person identified likes it, which is why Prince al-Waleed of Saudi Arabia is a object of derision in the Gulf ("Calls himself The Waleed, can you imagine? He thinks his money replaces first rank family connections!" - actual quote from a source in Dubai, when I was reporting on hypermarkets in the Gulf, and having a Waleed, sorry, a whale of a time.) Same for Mohamed (the) Fayed, the Harrods owner, whose biographer Tom Bower calls him "Fayed". His son, princess Diana's last boyfriend, who was a sweet if not very bright guy, was always credited in his producing gigs as "Dodi Fayed" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082158/combined), not al-Fayed. I've had Lebanese copy editors panstakingly remove the Als from a number of my stories. I think the Post is being naive (and if I remember correctly, they called Hitler "Herr Hitler", which made a VERY different point from "Mr Hitler".)

[cannons-at-dawn.livejournal.com]

I do love that icon.