I’m trying to decipher the newspapers here. I’ve talked about the headlines before, now I’m diving into the actual stories. So far, my opinion of the writing isn’t a very good one. I translated an article dealing with that entire debacle in Libya where a bunch of nurses were going to be executed for infecting kids with HIV. It seemed pretty clear to the rest of the world what happened, it was accidental and was caused by the substandard medical facilities there. Anyway, the article said that the punishment was reduced from execution after She(it) payed restitution to the victims. The prefix on the verb could have meant either a female or an organization or group whose word had the feminine gender. The article had mentioned the Libyan government earlier, and government is considered feminine, but that didn’t make much sense. I asked Adel who or what paid restitution. “Who do you think?” Well I didn’t know, I was expecting the article to tell me… “It’s the Bulgarian government of course!” When I asked how on earth I was supposed to know that since they had not been mentioned in the article at all he said, “A native speaker just assumes that it would be the Bulgarian government, there’s no need to actually say it.”
I find that telling on two counts. First of all, an American newspaper editor would never let that slide. Second of all, the assumption of the Bulgarian government being involved, to the point of not mentioning it, says a lot about the political situation in this area of the world. The expectation of government supplied money goes deep here, I hadn’t realized how deep until today..