As the NY Times states today:
Mr. Svanberg, looking somber as he left the White House, confirmed to waiting reporters that the president seemed “frustrated because he cares about the small people.” But he added: “People say that large oil companies don’t care about the small people. But we care. We care about the small people.”
The “small people” comment set off an immediate uproar in the blogosphere and elsewhere from people who said it showed BP’s indifference to those harmed by the spill. A BP spokesman called the remark a “slip in translation” by Mr. Svanberg, who is Swedish. Later Wednesday Mr. Svanberg apologized, saying he was “very sorry” he had spoken “clumsily.”
The poor fellow, he probably only speaks three or four languages and he tried to make a sympathetic comment and then the Americans dropped the hammer on him.
Having spent parts of two decades in other countries and having a modicum of facility in six languages I can appreciate how this can happen. I have done it in French many times, and in Italian my Sicilian dialect from Staten Island has gotten me in trouble many times in Florence, even though I was trying. In Greece, my Greek is better than my Italian but I have had from time to time use both with a taxi driver from the airport. Then in Russia I often wonder what I have told my driver, I have some reasonable facility but when you wander into local colloquialisms you often get in trouble.
Having done this and having some capability I can appreciate the problem. My Spanish is New York and when in Spain they think I sound like some creature from Mars. My French I have been told is Mauritanian, and that I would not touch with commentary. Yet I try out of respect for the people in the country in which I operated. Americans in Europe, and Asia, are often morbidly obese, wearing a t-shirt with some statement of abuse on both front and back, having some sneaker type foot wear, carrying about their girth a fanny pack, and wearing the universal baseball cap with the home team. And that is not an affront to the locals?
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