Skip to footer

President's turkey pardon creates China stir

Chinese news outlets mistook a pardoned turkey named Abe -- named after Abraham Lincoln -- to be instead named after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, provoking a round of gloating in the Chinese media.

|
Evan Vucci/AP
President Barack Obama pardons Abe the turkey on Wednesday for the Thanksgiving holiday.
  • By The Associated Press

President Barack Obama's pardoning of a turkey named "Abe" this Thanksgiving has led some Chinese to gloat at the Japanese prime minister's expense.

As part of a peculiar annual tradition at the White House, Obama on Wednesday granted amnesty from the dinner table to two turkeys named "Honest" and "Abe" — from the nickname for President Abraham Lincoln. But a translation glitch in Chinese media replaced the character for single-syllable "Abe" with the surname of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (pronounced "Ah-bay").

Several commenters in Chinese social media focused on comparing the prime minister to an animal.

Many Chinese harbor animosity toward Japan because of its brutal occupation of much of China during World War II, and they specifically scorn Abe because of his visits to a war shrine that is seen as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

The faulty translation of Abe was published by state-run China Radio International and picked up by other outlets. A man who answered the CRI news hotline said editorial staff there had used the Web to translate the name "Abe." Stories from Chinese media outlets that properly translated the name were circulating, but not as widely.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to President's turkey pardon creates China stir
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/1126/President-s-turkey-pardon-creates-China-stir
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe